


Scrupulous Honor

by CharlotteCordelier



Series: Asclepius [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: AU, BAMF Felicity Smoak, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Inaccuracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-15 16:27:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 30,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11809803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteCordelier/pseuds/CharlotteCordelier
Summary: AU: Felicity went to MIT, but not for computer science.  Now she's doing her medical residency in the crappiest craphole with loan forgiveness: The Robert Queen Memorial Clinic, smack in the middle of the Glades.  Who's the hero now, huh?





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity looked closer. One man with shaggy blonde hair--unkempt but deliberate. He was still upright. The man on the ground had closer cropped dark hair and a very expensive dress shirt.
> 
> “I’ll take that bet. We’re gonna need the Narcan,” she posited, gloving up.

_I do hereby affirm my loyalty to the profession I am about to enter. I will be mindful always of my great responsibility to preserve the health and the life of my patients, to retain their confidence and respect both as a physician and a friend who will guard their secrets with scrupulous honor and fidelity, to perform faithfully my professional duties, to employ only those recognized methods of treatment consistent with good judgment and with my skill and ability, keeping in mind always nature's laws and the body's inherent capacity for recovery._

-Osteopathic Oath

 

**Las Vegas, 2007**

There were scholarships and then there were stipends and then there were _scholarships_. Felicity had all of them, but they didn’t cover airfare to Boston. They didn’t cover winter coats that she’d never needed or ridiculously expensive snow boots that you couldn’t thrift in the damn desert. So she was doing what she’d been doing for the last year, since she’d figured out how to fudge her birthdate on her paperwork: riding around in an ambulance all night waiting for something terrible to happen.

She and her partner, Sandoval, sipped their coffees in silence. He never addressed her by her first name and she didn’t even know his. He obviously preferred it that way. The coffee was fresh, it was hot, it was actually good, so of course that’s when the radio crackled to life. A code 23, suspected overdose. That was the majority of their work: overdoses and midwestern tourists too dumb to hydrate, succumbing to the heat. The regularity was depressing and it was slowly sucking away at her faith in humanity. Pre-med would be practically restorative after this.

These morons didn’t even make it off the strip before they done fell over. There were two of them, already attracting a crowd. Some asshole was even taking pictures.

“Five bucks on crackacardia,” Sandoval said.

Felicity looked closer. One man with shaggy blonde hair--unkempt but deliberate. He was still upright. The man on the ground had closer cropped dark hair and a very expensive dress shirt.

“I’ll take that bet. We’re gonna need the Narcan,” she posited, gloving up.

She was right. It was a miracle drug and the dark haired man--boy--was breathing again while they got him onto the gurney and into the ambulance.

“What did he take,” Sandoval was demanding of the blonde man.

“I don’t know--he’s not a user.” Blondie looked generally distressed, flushed sweating.

“S.B.O.D.,” Sandoval muttered.

“Get in,” Felicity was using her loud voice. “Now.”

Blondie got in. Sandoval hit the lights and sirens and off they went into the parched night.

Felicity looked closer. It was a lot of sweat, soaking his hair and polo with its stupid little alligator. His pupils were--

“What did you take?”

“Huh?”

“What did you take, numbnuts?” Her loud voice was getting louder.

“Just a little molly.”

“Tourists,” she muttered. “Find a stoplight!” she yelled at Sandoval. It took her very little time to re-glove and start a saline drip. Blondie had good veins. She yelled at Sandoval again to let him know it was time to move again. Meanwhile, she cracked a couple chemical cold packs. “Put them in your armpits.”

Blondie stared at her. He didn’t seem to be grasping the events of the last ten or fifteen minutes. Which was hardly a surprise.

“The MDMA is heating you up from the inside out,” she said over the noise of the sirens and the engine. “You’re going to cook your brain.”

Blondie put the ice packs in his armpits. “Mmmmm,” he hummed, eyes sliding shut. “It feels like peppermint.”

The S.B.O.D. on the gurney had the temerity to snort under his oxygen mask, laughing at his friend. She’d seen it before, with rich party boys. It was fun and funny for them. People like her and Sandoval were just the help. They came along and cleaned up after the parties that got messy, just anonymous faces making unpleasant truths go away.

They handed off the two frat boys--what else could they be--at University Medical and took care of the necessary paperwork. It was time to go back to the ambulance and the now stale coffee and wait for another disaster. Felicity had just turned away from the admissions desk when she felt a warm hand on her elbow--it wasn’t possessive, but somehow...genteel. She turned and saw Blondie. He was staring at her, pupils blown, with the desperate concentration of the truly fucked up.

“I’m Oliver.”

She sighed. “I’m Felicity.”

“Felicity,” he exhaled. “You are so...glossy.”

Sandoval owed her five bucks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She saw the figure in the shabby coat approaching, lurching through the alley, and she was not afraid, not really. She had about five dollars in cash, a flip phone, and a small key ring, the last of which was tucked safely into her bra. Besides, she knew that pea coat. She had just opened her mouth to call out to Neal when fwooosh .
> 
> There he was. The Hood.

_Truth has no cause to fear opinions.  It wants no flattery.  It neither wants nor hates.  It is food and comfort._

-Andrew Taylor Still

 

**Starling, 2012**

There were more depressing places than the Glades to do her residency, she was sure.  She just couldn’t think of any at the moment.  Abandoned by industry, neglected by infrastructure, it was a blighted place.  At least it felt that way, after midnight, as Felicity made her way home from the corner store, a plastic bag with paletas, yakgwa, salmiakki, and a few Lean Cuisines in hand.  Okay, that was one thing.  You could not fault Starling bodegas for the selection.

She saw the figure in the shabby coat approaching, lurching through the alley, and she was not afraid, not really.  She had about five dollars in cash, a flip phone, and a small key ring, the last of which was tucked safely into her bra.  Besides, she knew that pea coat.  She had just opened her mouth to call out to Neal when _fwooosh_.

There he was.  The Hood.

“Holy shit,” she said, and dropped her bag.

The looming figure in green turned on Neal.  One front kick, heel to belly, laid him out flat.  The Hood drew an arrow, faster than she could see, and without thinking, Felicity lunged forward and laid a hand on his arm.

“Stop!  Stop!”  Maybe later she would have time to be embarrassed with how squeaky her voice was.  “It’s just Neal!”

“You know this man?”  A gravelly voice.

“Yes.  Yes.  He’s--”  Only semi-compliant with medication for his type II bipolar.  A longtime fan of marijuana.  An occasional binge drinker.  A father with a daughter far away in Gotham.  “He’s fine.”

“Fine.”

Distracted by her efforts to keep her mouth shut, Felicity elbowed past him and knelt on the ground next to Neal, a man in his late forties with thinning hair and glasses that didn’t seem to help his vision much.  The breath had been knocked out of him, she was sure, but she didn’t see any other signs of distress.  She needed to find an optometrist who would--

“He was following you.”

“He was looking for--”  Lithium, five dollars to hold, another referral for the mental health clinic.  “Me.  He was looking for me.”

“Miss...Smoak…” Neal gasped, as his breath returned.

“Are you alright?”

He nodded shakily.

“Okay, good.”  Felicity turned back to the Hood.  “Hand me that.  The bag.  The bag I dropped.”  He seemed somewhat bemused, but he complied.  Felicity reached in and produced the cellophane bag of yakgwa.  “Here,” she pushed it into Neal’s hands.  “Hurry on up to the Bridge House.  They should still have some beds.  Stop by the clinic tomorrow and I’ll work you in.”  

Neal needed no further encouragement to get gone.  And suddenly the bleakness in her chest was replaced by a welcome rush of hot, healthy anger.

“You,” she hissed, advancing on the Hood.  “Do you have any idea how long it takes to get people to trust me out here?  Do you have any idea how hard it is to get anything done?  Anything good?”

“You’re a social worker?  A nurse?”

“I am Doctor Felicity Smoak, D.O.,” she was raising her voice now.  Four years of med school. _Four_.  “And I work around that corner--actual work, helpful work, not just pretend hero bullshit.”

She strode past him in her hot pink mizunos, baggy scrub bottoms, and T.O.S. t-shirt.  She was tired.  She was pissed.  Her blood sugar was tanked.  And she did not have time for this vigilante nonsense.  People in the Glades didn’t bother her.  They knew her.  She was safer to stroll around than the cops were.  She at least was useful.

She stomped--there was no other word--up the back stairs of the Robert Queen Memorial Clinic, fished her keys out of her bra, and unlocked the door to her small studio apartment.  It slammed behind her in a exquisitely satisfying way.  She locked the door, deadbolted it,and chained it, and then realized the sorry truth.

Her goddam paletas were melted.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A benefactor makes a visit.

_To find health should be the object of the doctor.  Anyone can find disease._

-Andrew Taylor Still

**Starling, 2012**

“Are you ready to leave?” Felicity asked softly.  The young woman on the exam table was so young and so beautiful and so impossibly trapped.  “Marisol?”

Marisol shook her head cautiously, jaw still sore.

“Okay,” Felicity reassured her.  “That’s okay.  I can still help you.”

“He doesn’t want me on the pill.  But--  I can’t--  A baby.”  Marisol sucked in a breath and held it, a veil of black hair trembling in front of her face.  “He won’t let me go to the Planned Parenthood.  He won’t use condoms.  I’m so scared that--”

“There are other options,” Felicity said quickly.  “Ones that he doesn’t have to know about.  There’s an implant, about the size of a matchstick, or an intrauterine device that--”

“No, no, he could feel those.  I can’t do those.”

“That’s okay.  What about the shot?”

"The shot?"

“Yeah, just like the flu shot.  It lasts three months at a time.  You only have to come back four times a year.”

Marisol nodded once, jerkily, and then took a real breath for the first time since she had walked through the clinic’s narrow front door.  Felicity’s receptionist/assistant/accountant/bouncer, a bristly looking young woman named (improbably) Sin, had taken one look at Marisol and sent her straight back to the single exam room.  It had been a slow day--the free mobile dental clinic was in town.  And then came Marisol, with her bruised jaw and her unrelenting terror and enough guts to build a city on.

Felicity took a moment to compose herself in the supply room while she scanned the shelves for the Depo-Provera.  “Marisol is what matters.  Marisol is what matters.”  She took another deep breath.  “Oseh shalom bimromav,” she added, almost as an afterthought.  Bolstered somewhat, she returned to the exam room and administered the shot that would keep Marisol’s boyfriend from impregnating her against her will.  Marisol didn’t flinch.  

Felicity dug into her scrubs pocket and came up with a business card.  She’d had them made up about five minutes after she’d bought a clue about what this job was really about, which was about two weeks after she’d unpacked her hatchback and embarked on her one-woman-mission in the Glades.  She handed the card over.

_Kuttler Cosmetology_

_When you’re ready for the new you!_

There was a large lipstick kiss mark in the lower left hand corner and a phone number in the lower right.  Marisol raised her eyebrows expressively.

“It’s real,” Felicity said.  “Well, real enough.  The number goes to a voicemail for Kuttler Cosmetology.  There are several of us that monitor it, all friends.  When you’re ready, day or night, we’ll get you out.”

“I have a cat,” Marisol said, “named Rabbit.”

“Rabbit can come with--of course Rabbit can come.  When you’re ready.”

Marisol nodded, tucked the card into her purse, and slipped out of the exam room without another word.

Felicity’s heart was somewhere in the region of her Mizunos.  She dragged herself from the exam room to the front desk (which was literally just a desk) and collapsed next to Sin in a chair of dubious structural integrity.  Felicity put her feet up, leaning the chair back, pushing her luck.

“She leaving him yet?” Sin asked.

“Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“That’s a no.  Did you give her a card?”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Did you tell her we can get a place?”

“Doctor-pat--”

“Oh, stuff it, Smoak.”  Sin threw her pen at the desk.  It bounced off and fell to the floor.  They both watched it, contemplating whether or not they had the wherewithal to retrieve it.  They did not.

“Please tell me it’s the end of the day,” Felicity said.

“Oh damn.”

“Language.”

“There’s a guy here to see you.

“Come on, Sin, we agreed.  No walk-ins after six.”

“No, he's not from around here.  Way too well groomed.”

“It’s not one of the boys from The Cock Pit again, is it?  The ones who got into the bad body oil?  We haven't restocked the Benadryl.”

“No,” Sin snorted.  “It’s not a boy from The Cock Pit.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” said a male voice immediately behind Felicity.

She startled, the chair creaked, and together they fell over backwards.  Her whole body flinched in anticipation of slamming her head into the linoleum behind her and then--nothing.  She was suspended maybe six inches above the floor.  The man who had caught the edge of the chair back looked unperturbed and slowly returned her to her upright and locked position.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Holy shit,” Sin said.

“Language,” Felicity said reflexively.  Professionalism was not Sin’s strong suit.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Sin said, getting a look at their visitor.

“Language,” Felicity said again.  “And I’m fine.”  She stood.  The man in front of her was not only handsome--in like a middleweight build-you-a-log-cabin sandalwood musk scruff kind of way--but also charming, with a literal damn twinkle in his--  “Sorry, what?”

“I said I gotta go,” Sin looked stricken.  “I’m allergic to rich people.”

“Wait--what?”  Felicity felt like maybe she had hit her head and nobody told her.

The man ducked his head and made a face, somehow shrinking a little inside his beautiful wool coat.  Oh, no, he was impossibly well dressed.  Not just rich, then, but wealthy.  It was the difference between the high stakes tables and the private room.  And genetics had been very, very good to him.  With that twinkle in his very recessively blue eyes.  Oh, no.

“Blondie,” she murmured.

“Come again?” he said, mouth quirking.

“Make a hole,” Sin declared and elbowed between the two of the roughly, making a beeline for the door.  She slowed down just long enough to lock the clinic’s front door behind her and booked it into the night.

“I think she likes me,” Blondie said.

“It’s not personal.  I don’t think she likes anyone.”  Felicity cleared her throat, suddenly very aware of her scuffed sneakers and baggy scrub bottoms and Bad Wolf t-shirt.  Her hair was frizzy, pulled back, and showing almost an inch of root.  She was not high stakes tables.  “So, you’re here.  Obviously.  In my clinic.”

“Actually, it’s my clinic,” he said with another prepossessing look.  And then she knew.

“Holy shit.”

“Language.”  His face was twitching again.

“I.  If I’d, if I’d known.  We could have, you know, a tour.  A brochure, maybe.  I’m great at powerpoint, actually, like outstanding.  Oh G-d I hope you don’t want to see the apartment.  It’s fine--it’s great, actually, but I did laundry last night and all my bras are still line-drying.  Of course the dryer works fine, but it’s hard on bras, you know.  I’m going to try and stop now in three, two, one.”  Felicity physically bit her lips closed.

Oliver Queen looked like his amusement was fighting with his confusion, but it still suited him.

“I talk.  When I’m nervous.”

“I can see that.”

“So.  What can I do for you, Mr. Queen?”

“I want you to tell me about my clinic.”

“This is...it.”  Felicity gestured to the small waiting room, the Soviet era desk, and the exam room behind her.  It was a pre-war building, narrow, with an assortment of posters promoting vegetables and discouraging unprotected sex.  Directly above them was Felicity’s efficiency apartment, and above that was a small, unused attic space.

“It’s nice.”

“It’s not,” Felicity scoffed, “but I don’t want nice.  Nice, in this neighborhood, would make people uncomfortable.”

Oliver Queen stared at her and then nodded, understanding.

“Why are you really here?” she asked pointedly.  “You don’t want a tour.  You don’t need a history lesson.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then shook his head.  “You know I’ve been away.  But I’m back and I’m trying to...make things right.”

“I need books and computers,” Felicity said bluntly.  No one had ever said she didn’t grasp the point quickly and this man was ready to open his wallet.  “A tablet, decent medical record software, enough money to subscribe to a decent patient portal interface.  I need more money for drugs and to invite some instructors to come in for parenting classes, maybe cooking classes.  I want to do more work with the library and the Planned Parenthood around the corner.  There’s a Boys and Girls Club that I want to do more with--I want to offer scoliosis screenings there, but I can’t find the time.  I really need an NP here at least part time, full would be better.  Sin needs more training.  And books.  Did I say books already?”

“You did.”  Oliver blinked.  “What kind of books?”

“Baby books--the board ones, you know?  The kind that can stand up to a little chewing.   _The Runaway Bunny_ , you know, things like that.”

“ _The Runaway Bunny_.”

“That’s my favorite.  Well, it was.  I read somewhat larger books now.  But they need to be diverse--studies have shown how important it is for kids to see themselves reflected in their world from an early age.  There’s one called _Besos for Baby_ and one with a girl in a dress spinning in a circle-- _My Heart Fills With Happiness_.  Anna from the library has been trying to teach me a little of her story time magic, but it’s not as easy as it looks.  Studies.  Have you read the Adverse Childhood Event study from the CDC?  I think I have a copy of the major findings around here somewhere.  Better parent-child bonding can prevent so much unnecessary physical and mental suffering later in life and the reading thing--I got all this from Anna--it’s the single biggest predictor of a child’s, you know, everything.  Listen, what do you know about public health, like, as a field of study?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“That’s okay--I’m going to make you a list.”

“A list.”

“Two lists, actually.  One is the to-do list and the other is the to-read list.”

“Listen, Ms. Smoak.”

“It’s Doctor,” she said firmly.  “Doctor Smoak.  And--and--”  She tried to stop herself, but it had been a long day and Marisol was probably going to be back the week after next or the week after that and it would be worse before it was better.  “And, you know what, if you want to write a check and leave, that’s fine.  It’s fine.  I’ll put the money to good use.”  Felicity took a step closer, toe to toe, and tilted her chin up.  “But if you want to actually understand my clinic--sorry, your clinic--then you’re going to have to try a little harder because nothing that happens here happens out of context.  Okay?  Not the crime, not the alcoholics with diabetes, not the kids with asthma, the teens sexting each other, the cops stop-and-frisking the teens, none of it happens out of context.  It all happens _here_ and _now_.”  She was starting to gesticulate.  “You can’t fix the Glades with one health clinic or one food drive or one crazy man with a bow and arrow.  You have to do everything, all the time.  All the time.”

“Doctor Smoak,” Oliver said.  And was it her imagination or was he staring at her lips?

“Yes?”

“I think I’ll have to take those lists to go.”  His eyes cut towards the locked front door.  An even larger man, definitely a heavyweight remodel-your-house-handsome type, was waiting in a coat  that said he didn’t really gamble at all.  “My ride is here.”

“Right.  Of course.”  Felicity turned and quickly rattled through the desk’s drawers until she found a legal pad and a functioning red felt tip.  As quickly as she could, she made her lists.  And then, at the bottom, she wrote her number.  Not for Kuttler Cosmetology, but her own personal crappy flip phone cell number.  She tore off two pages, folded them, and with absolutely no input from her frontal lobe, she reached for his lapels, fully prepared to tuck them into his coat pockets.  Thank G-d he intercepted her hands and deftly pulled the lists from them, somehow minimizing the awkwardness.  Up close, he smelled less like sandalwood and more like bergamot and...resin?

“Thank you,” Oliver said, really smiling for the first time.  “This has been...enlightening.”

“I’m sorry if I--”  She fiddled with the pen.  “I talk when I’m nervous.”

“I can see that.”

Felicity put the pen behind her ear and showed him towards the door, where his friend? driver? was waiting.

“John Diggle,” said the handsome black man in the no-nonsense coat, extending his hand.

“Dr. Smoak,” she said and shook it.  “I’ll just.”  She pointed her thumb behind her.  “I have laundry.  To put away.  Special laundry.”

Diggle raised an eyebrow.  Oliver Queen was making that amusement vs. horror face again.  She shook her head and started to close the door before she remembered.

“Oh, and HEPA filters,” she yelled after them.  Felicity thought she’d be lucky to get so much as a Christmas card.  She locked the door, pulled the gate behind it, and went upstairs to put her bras away before she was compelled to mention them to any more strange men.


	4. Chapter 4

_ The best osteopath is the best engineer; the best engineer is the best osteopath. _

-Andrew Taylor Still

 

**Starling, 2012**

Felicity had just pulled her kettlecorn out of the microwave and taken a seat on her mattress, stolen cable TV on and the  _ Elementary _ theme song playing, when someone knocked on her door.  She froze entirely and at once, a handful of popcorn not quite to her mouth.  The knock came again.  Nope, not a fluke.  She dropped the popcorn and slid silently to the floor, reaching behind the box spring and came out with her little black Walther.  Exhaling gently, she eased the safety catch off.  When she rose to her feet and began to step towards the door, the pistol was solid and smooth and reassuring.

“Who is it?” she called, easing herself beside the door jamb.

“The Hood,” said a low pitched, modulated voice.

“Sure,” she said companionably, “and I’m Batgirl.”

“I need a doctor.”  His voice hadn’t been altered before, she was pretty sure.

“Psychiatric outpatient clinic is Thursday afternoon.  Come back then.”

“Open the door.”  Modulator or no, her visitor sounded pissed.  “He’s bleeding out.”

“Who is?”

“Are you a doctor or not?” he yelled.

“Fuck my life,” she breathed out.  “I’m opening the door,” she announced.  “I have a gun and a permit and the constitutional right to defend myself.”

“Open.  The.  Door.”

Felicity pulled the locks, threw the door open, and dropped back, her right hand around the pistol, resting in the cradle of her left hand.  Dark had just fallen and the last light of sunset made the green leather glow faintly.  It was definitely the Hood.  And over his shoulders, in a fireman carry, was the handsome heavyweight John Diggle.  Blood dropped from his limp hand onto her landing.

“Move,” the Hood said.  She moved.

“What did you do to him?” she asked, thumbing the safety on and tucking the gun into the back waistband of her yoga pants.

“I didn’t do anything to him.”  The Hood staggered slightly under Diggle’s weight until he reached the table.  Then he had to stop again.

Felicity’s studio was, to say the least, spartan.  There was her mattress and box spring, her plastic chest of drawers with the tv on top, and there was her table.  It had come with the apartment.  The entire building had probably been built around it.  It was a massive slab of oak, easily bigger than the queen mattress, and every last inch was covered with crap: wires, pliers, screwdrivers, allen wrenches, circuit boards, tiny ball bearings, cans of liquid graphite, half-disassembled smart phones with cracked screens, candy, candy wrappers, keyboards missing keys, keys missing keyboards, and several different kinds of gloves, none in a matching set.

“Oh,” she said.  “Hang on.”  Frantically, she began carrying armfuls of tech paraphernalia to her bed and dumping them there.  “Careful, careful--don’t put him on that.  That’s a roomba for Ms. Albina--well, it will be a roomba for Ms. Albina.  Someday.”

As soon as there was enough space for him, the Hood was laying the other man out carefully.  Felicity ran into her tiny bathroom and grabbed a towel and then her enormous body pillow off her bed.  She folded the towel, curved it into a u-shape, and placed gently around his head and neck for some support.  The body towel she wedged under his knees while the Hood was removing the man’s jacket and shirt, tearing seams where he had to.

“I’ll try and stop the bleeding for now,” she said.  “But you need to call nine-one-one.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“Jesus, you really did shoot him, didn’t you.”

“I did not shoot him.  You will treat him here.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Next time I’ll handle it myself.”

“You do that, champ.”  Felicity dove under the massive table and re-emerged with an enormous black duffle bag embroidered with Tim the Beaver’s horrible face.  She unzipped it violently and began pawing through the assortment of medical supplies: mask, gloves, suture kit, saline...  The next half an hour passed in a blur.  The GSW was a through and through, but there was a bleeder.  Suturing that shut was the tricky part, then it was just mop up work.  When it was over, she blinked and rolled her shoulders, surprised to see that while she had been working, the Hood had started the IV, hung the saline, and was keeping his third and fourth fingers on the unconscious man’s radial pulse.  Like a nurse.  Felicity peeled off her gloves and mask and put them in her small trash can and made for the door.

“Where are you going?” the Hood asked.

“I just need to grab a few things from downstairs.”

“I’ll go.”

“It’s okay, I got it.”

“It’s not safe out there.”

Felicity snorted.  “Yeah.  I kind of figured.”  She returned with a little pulse-oximeter and a decent stethoscope and a tupperware full of miscellaneous supplies.  She slipped the pulse oximeter onto his finger and it chirped good news at her.  “Does he have any allergies?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, I’m going to start him on some cephalosporin, so I don’t accidentally kill him.”  She opened the tupperware and sighed, dejected.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have enough for him, but then I’m out.”

“Out.”

“Believe it or not, I could get it on the black market pretty cheap.  But it’s hard to convince anyone to deliver the legal stuff to us in this part of town.  A couple weeks ago, our regular guy got held up for nothing more than blood pressure medication and birth control.”

It felt like the blackness under the hood bored right into her.  “What do you need?”

“Everything but opiates,” she admitted.  “I don’t keep those around.  Ever.  You’re going to have to find your friend some percocet on your own time.”

“Why are building a roomba?” he asked, with no preamble whatsoever.

“Oh.”  She sighed and looked at the mess on her bed.  “It’s for Miss Albina.  She has RA and on bad days she can’t vacuum or sweep.  But she has three cats, three Persian cats.  All very fluffy.  I have a guy who pulls interesting stuff out of the trash for me, and then I try and put Humpty back together again.  Air purifiers, dustbusters, light boxes.  The occasional computer.”

The hooded face turned and scanned her tiny apartment.  “You put trash back together.”

“Yeah,” Felicity smiled, pushing some hair out of her face.  “In a former life, I wanted to work for Intel or Google.  I can’t tell you how much better Android would be if they let me work on it.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, you know.  Life.  I mean, I doubt murder was your Plan A.”  The silence was awkward, even by her standards, and it suddenly occurred to her that she was very alone with a very dangerous man and she was very sure he was the quicker draw.  “I’m sorry.  I should have said--”

Diggle groaned, coughed, and opened his eyes.

“Don’t move,” she said.  “You’ve been shot.”

“I know,” he grunted.  “It’s not the first time.  Where am I?”

“The Robert Queen Memorial Clinic.”

Diggle turned his head towards the Hood, glaring.  “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Not now,” the Hood said.  “This is Dr. Felicity Smoak.”

“Thank you,” Diggle said to her.  “I appreciate it.”

“Mr. Diggle--”

“John,” he said, flexing his fingers.

“John.  What happened tonight?”

“We have to go,” said the Hood.

And just like that, the train was in motion again.  Diggle was removing his own IV, smiling, thanking her again, while the Hood helped him upright and supported him out the door and into the night, where it was raining softly.  Just like that, they were both gone.  She felt faintly guilty that she had called him a murderer, until she remembered that’s exactly what he was.

She woke up the next morning and there was kettlecorn stuck in her hair and she had missed some of the blood when she cleaned off her table and she didn’t notice until her elbow was covered in rusty flakes and then of course the hot water was out in the building and her only towel was dirty and she ended up air-drying in her cold bathroom while trying not to cry.

But then, when Felicity opened her door to go downstairs to work, she found a rolling suitcase--a big suitcase--full of drugs.  Good drugs.  Antibiotics and NSAIDS and albuterol and a PEP cocktail and paroxetine and warfarin and diflucan and three kinds of birth control and omeprazole and yes, a small bottle of Tylenol 3 marked Personal Use Only.  And underneath the Tylenol 3--Felicity gasped--Complera.  Where the hell did he get Complera?  How many people could she give it to?  And for how long?  Calculating furiously, she almost missed the note pinned to the front of the suitcase.

_ More to come.  Next Friday and every Friday. _

Then she really did cry.


	5. Chapter 5

_ Local shocks affect the whole nervous system, the nerve and blood supply to every part of the body _ .

-Andrew Taylor Still

 

**Starling, 2012**

For a number of reasons, Felicity Smoak had a healthy fear of the police.  And if she was afraid of the plainclothes detective, Sin was outright terrified.  They weren’t the kind of friends that shared confidences, but Felicity had the distinct impression that Sin had been sat down in front of police officers before.  They’d both rather be fed to crocodiles than answer Quentin Lance’s questions.  But it wasn’t every day that your clinic’s benefactor was arrested for murder, among other things.  Hell of a mug shot, though.

The questions were innocuous at first, and Felicity was willing to put up with it.  She insisted on the interview taking place in the waiting room of the clinic, where anyone passing by could see them through the window.  The last thing she wanted was for her patients to think she was a narc.  So she sat very still, feet slightly spread, and arms crossed, her whole posture radiating  _ how about no _ .

“And how well do you know Oliver Queen?”

“It’s his clinic.”

“You’ve never met him?”

“One time.”

“And when was that?”

“A week or so ago?”

“And what about two nights ago?”

When her TV viewing had been interrupted by a vigilante and a bullet hole.  

“I don’t remember anything,” Felicity said smoothly.  “You?”

Sin shook her head.

“We don’t remember anything.”

“Where do you live, Miss...Sin?”

“Around.”

“And where is ‘around’ exactly?”

“Detective,” Felicity said, smiling tightly.  “What exactly do you think that we know?”

“I think,” he said, raising his voice, “that the CCTV footage of the alley behind the coffeeshop shows the Hood carrying another man headed in your direction.  And then that footage shows them both walking away.  I think that man was Oliver Queen.  So I think--I think--that I’m looking at one, maybe two, accessories to murder after the fact.”

Felicity’s body lifted out of her chair and her hands met her hips and her chin lifted before she knew what was happening.  It was an attitude she had seen her mother assume a thousand times.  It was in her blood.

“I think you should go,” she said.  And it sounded so much like her mother that it raised goosebumps on her forearms.

“Now, Ms. Smoak, you--”

“Doctor.  It’s Doctor Smoak, Detective.  We’re not under arrest and we’d like you to leave.”

“There’s no need---”

“Now!” said the voice of Donna Smoak.

“Excuse me,” said a huge Hawai’ian man, stepping out of the exam room.  Thank G-d.  It was Honi, a gentle soul and former Husky linebacker who just happened to look and sound a small land formation.  Felicity could have kissed him.  “Is everything okay?” he rumbled.

“It’s fine, Honi,” Felicity smiled brightly, brittly.  “Sin, show Honi back to the room and take his vitals while I see the detective to the door.”

Sin, of course, had exactly zero hours of medical training and was more likely to use sphygmomanometer as a garrote than a device to measure blood pressure.  But she hurried into the exam room, Honi ambling behind her, easily blocking her from the cop’s view.  Felicity stepped forward so that Lance’s only path was out the door or through her.  

“Don’t come back here without a warrant.”   _ I am a leaf on the wind.  I am a leaf on the wind. _

Detective Lance sneered and then, mercifully, left.

“Go run your little world,” Felicity muttered.  Back in the exam room, Sin was white as chalk in the patient chair, Honi rubbing circles on her back.

“He scared the keiki,” Honi said solemnly.

“He’s gone now,” Felicity said.

“Much better, then,” he nodded and transitioned to patting Sin on the head.

“Cops always come back,” Sin said with mortal certainty.  “This is about the pills, isn’t it?”

Honi clasped his hands over his belly and gazed at the ceiling--Felicity could tell he was suddenly, conveniently, profoundly deaf.  She was going to have to bake something for him.

“Well fuck the cops anyway,” Sin said.  “We needed them.  We need them.”

“Yeah.  We do.”  Felicity made her hand into a fist and held it out to Sin.  “No gods, no masters.”

Sin smiled tremulously and bumped fists with her.  “All cops are bastards.”

“Now,” Felicity said.  “I want you to go out there and call our friend at Aetna and shake him until some money falls out, okay?”

“Okay.”  Sin stood up, smiled at Honi, and went back to her post, shutting the door behind her.

“Oh, Honi,” Felicity exhaled.  “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said.  “You can call me any time, you know that.”

“I do.”  Felicity grinned.  “And you will not believe it, but I have some free samples of omeprazole today--about a month’s worth.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the medical stuff gets real fictional real fast. I am not a medical professional, but I was raised on ER, so I feel like that counts for something, fanfic wise.

_I want it understood that I look upon the treating of effects as being unwarranted as it would be for the fireman of a city to fight the smoke and pay no attention to the cause that produces it._

-Andrew Taylor Still

 

**Starling, 2013**

Since the night she had patched up John Diggle, additional trunks of medication had arrived, every week like clockwork.  Drugs and more surgical supplies than she was used to since her rotations.  And a fat stack of untraceable, loaded debit cards that she didn’t know what to do with just yet.  Felicity was now using the trunks to store and organize machine and computer parts, which had tidied up the apartment quite a bit.  Inside the last trunk had been a pre-paid burner that was, to her chagrin, nicer than her real phone.  There weren’t any numbers in it.  It never rang.  But during the day, she kept it in her scrubs and at night she charged it at night right next to her own crappy phone.

In the meantime, her benefactor was out of the legal woods.  One truly ridiculous house party, a murder attempt, and an interrupted gun deal later, and Oliver Queen was in the clear.  He was talking about opening a nightclub--like a tiny dress lines of coke nightclub--around the corner from the clinic.  He was dating a ridiculously attractive brunette lady with perfect skin.  The resiliency of the rich never ceased to amaze her.  

But she couldn’t be mad at him.  Not long after--according to the most reliable kind of gossip--Detective Lance had personally removed his ankle monitor, Oliver had done something very nice, thoughtful, and apparently out of character.

“Yo,” was how Sin answered the clinic’s phone.  “Jesus, woman, my ear drums.  Hang on.  Hang _on_.”  She held the receiver at arm’s length.  “Smoak!  The hokey bitch from the library is on the phone and I think she’s crying.”

“Language,” Felicity said, more out of habit than any real hope that Sin would become a more...traditional kind of receptionist.  She picked up the phone to discover that the hokey bitch from the library was indeed crying.  “Anna?  What’s wrong?  Anna, I love you, you know I love you, but I can’t hear you when you cry like that.  Dogs can’t hear you.”  It was a very one sided conversation.  In the end, Felicity could only make out something about felt boards and support groups and legos and a pediatric mindfulness coach?  Was that even a thing?  

Sin waved a hand to get her attention, then pointed her thumb behind her towards the front door where John Diggle was approaching with an enormous crate, a crate the size a human man shouldn’t be able to carry solo.

“Anna, bubbala, I have to go.  Are you going to be okay?  Good.  I have to go.  Yes, Anna.  yes, Anna.  Bye.”

“Hello, Dr. Smoak,” Diggle said, smiling broadly as he came in.  “You’re looking very nice today.”

“Um.  Thank you?”

“It’s the hair,” Sin opined.  “I told her she had to dye it or cut it.  She’s wearing lipstick today, too.”

“Yes, thank you,” Felicity said.  Her hair was longer and curlier than Vegas might prefer, but it was at least all the right shades of blonde now.  “Not everyone wants to know the secret grooming lives of women.”

“Never can tell,” Sin said.  “Takes all kinds.”

“Okay, then,” Diggle said, as he set the crate on the waiting room floor.  It was the end of the day, but there were still a few patients waiting to be seen.  They craned their necks while Diggle used a crowbar to open the crate.  What was inside was presents.

“Oh, Diggle,” she gasped.

“I won’t lie.  I tweaked his conscience a little.”

“I don’t care what part of him you tweaked.”  She was so caught up, she wouldn’t remember to embarrassed about that little faux pas later.  Felicity picked up a copy of _A is for Activist_ and pressed it into the sweaty hands of the nearest toddler.  “Books!  So many books!”   _What to Expect When You’re Expecting_ , _Our Bodies Ourselves_ , _Happiest Baby on the Block_ , _Positive Discipline,_ _Being Jazz_ , _Angelina Ballerina_ , _Beyond Magenta_ , _The Hunger Games_ , _The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian_.

“ _Girls to the Front_!” Sin said, and grabbed it, only to hesitate.  “Can I?”

“Of course,” Felicity said.  “Of course!  It’s yours!  Diggle!”  She threw her arms his neck.  “The books!”

“You’re welcome,” Diggle said and then, in a lower voice.  “There’s three tablets in the bottom and credentials for the best health record software I could find.”

Felicity hugged him even harder, but it was like trying to pick up a redwood.  Eventually, she was only going to hurt herself.

“Oh, and Oliver did remember one thing on his own.”  John reached into the crate and removed a hardback picture book and handed it to her.  Blue background, white text, green grass.  Two bunnies.  Felicity ran her hand over the dust cover.

 _If you run away, I will run after you.  For you are my little bunny_.

Felicity’s breath stop and for a moment she thought she might throw up.

“Are you okay?,” Sin asked.

“I’m fine.  I’m just surprised.”

“He said it was at the top of the list.”

“It was,” she said.  “It was.  I’m just going to go put it in a safe place.  John, this was so wonderful.  Thank you.  And thank Oliver for us, too.  Sin, keep an eye on the goodies.”  She walked upstairs like a robot, hands shaking.  The book went between the mattress and the wall, next to the gun.  Felicity locked the door behind her on the way out.

She heard no more about the Queens after that for a while.  If she’d had the brainspace, she might have heard about another archer or she might have heard that Oliver Queen was in a motorcycle accident.  Someone might have even told her about Walter Steele disappearing without a trace.  Hanukkah came and went barely observed.  She didn’t even notice the passing of Rita Levi-Montalcini, one of her true idols.  It was flu season in the Glades and half the people couldn’t afford the heat and the diabetics couldn’t hardly keep their toes on.  Felicity felt like she was up to her knees in toes.  There was a new street drug called vertigo that had people passed out in alleys at night and waking up with frostbite or worse and occasionally not waking up at all.  Plus, the Hood had been notably absent for most of January and as a result, Honi and other patients were escorting her to and from the bodega and even to and from her doubly-secure parking garage (recently provided by Queen Consolidated).  The petty crooks were getting bolder and while Felicity never felt unsafe, she knew that as an outsider not all information was available to her.

All things considered, the February firebug would have passed her by completely except that one night, she was awakened in the middle of a truly dead-to-the-world sleep by someone pounding on the door.  It took her just a few moments to locate both her glasses and her gun.  And in the meantime, the pounding slid down the door, like the person outside was dropping to their knees.  She thought about Honi’s worried face and Sin’s admonitions to be careful, like she was talking to some sort of sad puppy and not a grown woman.

“Felicity,” someone rasped outside.

“Who is it?”  It didn’t sound like the Hood--the voice modulator wasn’t on, anyway.

“Me.”

Oh, well that cleared things right up.

“Can’t. Breathe.”  It sounded realistic.  Would somebody do that?  Some Ted Bundy wannabe trying to get in her door?  Or was somebody actually going to die on her rickety staircase?

“Fuck my fucking life,” she said, and disengaged the safety before unlocking the door.  It was the Hood and he was in no shape to Ted Bundy anyone.  Once again, the safety went back on the pistol.  She helped him crawl on hands and knees, into the apartment.  He sat, legs out, back braced against the wall next to the door, while she re-locked it.  Her first instinct was to reach for the hood, and he knocked her hands away.

“I need to see your lips, jackass,” she said, “to see if they’re blue.”

“There was a fire,” he managed, and then coughed so hard he gagged.

“Don’t swallow that!” she ordered, scrambling for a clean tupperware in her kitchenette.  She held it in front of him.  “Spit.”  There was a sprinkling of black flakes.  She handed the tupperware back to him.  “If you cough it up, spit it out.  I need to see it.  Were you hit in the chest?”

“Not...recently.”  

She went through her trunks of supplies and emerged with a rolling O2 tank and a mask and a more sophisticated pulse oximeter than she’d previously had.  She slipped it on his finger and it beeped disapprovingly.

“Eighty-five.  Not great.”  She proffered the mask and he took it, turning his face down and away so that she couldn’t see but she heard his breathing grow a little less labored.

“Can I please--”

“No.”

“Listen, bro,” she said, in her loud voice.  “There’s two things you need to know.  One, even if I knew who you were, I couldn’t tell anyone and the great State of Washington couldn’t make me tell anyone.  Two, even if I received a federal subpoena from...I don’t know...Eric Holder himself, I would go to jail before I turned over any evidence.  All the clinic’s records are encrypted now and there is a dead man switch in case of emergency.  I help people a lot shadier than you are every day.  Drug dealers, wife-beaters, and I don’t say jack about shit and that is hill I will die on.  So don’t ever think you can’t come here because I’ll snitch.  That is not how this works.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to die on my porch because you were afraid to come in.”

The Hood nodded slowly.  “I can’t.  Not yet.”

“Whatever.  Now I’m going to get my stethoscope and listen to your chest.  And no, you don’t have to take your leather...situation off.  I’ll just feel you up like a sixth grader at the movies.”  He laughed, coughed, and spat.

“I’m going to start some saline, too.  Any burns?”

He shook his head.

“Well that’s something anyway.”

At some point, after he had started improving and she’d started tapering the oxygen, she had fallen asleep on the table, glasses askew, head on her crossed arms.  She woke to the sound of her door closing softly.  The saline IV was coiled in her trash can, the oxygen was off, and the coffeemaker was on and brewing.  She’d had one night stands who weren’t so polite.  She hadn’t given him any information about aftercare, or complications, but hopefully if he stopped breathing again, he’d tell somebody.

Yawning, Felicity went to check her phone, like every morning, and saw that the burner was unplugged.  She opened it.  He’d put his number in, under “Robin.”


	7. Chapter 7

_Any variation from perfect health marks a functional derangement in the physiological department of man.  Efforts at restoration from the diseased to the healthy condition should present but one object to the mind, and that is to explore minutely and seek the variation from the normal._

-Andrew Taylor Still

 

**Starling, 2013**

P90X was kicking her ass and she was sore and tired and generally wondering if her life wouldn’t be better if she gave up on herself and bought stretchier pants.  Yet she kept trying.  It was an outpatient psych morning at the clinic, and therefore Felicity’s half day.  And like some Sisyphean Jane Fonda, she never stopped attempting to get in shape, girl.  Was this what adulthood was?  Walk-lunging back and forth across your apartment while gasping for breath?  She was spared the indignities of another round of spider planks by the ringing of her phone, her normal crappy phone.  The caller ID said DIGGLE.

“Hello?” she panted, confused, more than anything.

“Felicity, it’s John.”

“Mr. Diggle?”

“The one and only.”  He did not sound like he was going to be showing up with a sackful of presents this time.

“What’s wrong?  Is everything okay?”

“Of course--listen, would it be alright if we dropped by?”

“We?”

“Oliver’s feeling a little under the weather.  I was wondering if you could work us in for a quick visit.”

“Of course,” she said, nonplussed, “but--I mean, forgive me if I’m wrong--but doesn’t he have a doctor?  Like, a fancy concierge house call hand-holding doctor?”

“We’re looking for a little extra discretion, especially with the current media situation.”

“Right.  Um, it’s my morning off, so just come up the back stairs and I’ll let you in.”  Felicity hung up and scrambled to tidy up a little, hiding her dirty dishes in the sink and her battered workout gear in one of her prescription drug trunks.  She only barely remembered to change out of her sports bra and shorts  into jeans and a t-shirt before she heard the swank sedan in the alley outside.  Quickly, she opened her laptop and did a quick google on what the media situation might be. The results were informative, to say the least: Thea Queen, 18th birthday bash, Mercedes convertible, car vs. tree, vertigo.

“Frak,” she muttered.  How did these people have so much and still manage to screw their own lives up up so badly?  Again.  Some more.

She opened the door as the two men made the landing.  And it was a good thing, because Diggle didn’t have a spare hand to knock with.  One hand was clamped around Oliver’s bicep and the other was fisted in the material of the back of his jacket.  Despite the support, the man himself was listing heavily to the right in the direction of the rickety stairs.

“What happened to you?” she asked, appalled.

“Hangover,” Oliver said, without much conviction.  Diggle began steering him inside.

“Uh-huh.”  Felicity pulled a folding chair out from her work table just in time to see Oliver pitch suddenly to the left, grabbing for the table edge and missing it.  He would have gone headfirst onto the scuffed linoleum if Diggle hadn’t had such good reflexes.  Felicity said nothing, but pulled out the first rolling suitcase that the Hood had left her, now filled with enough portable equipment to do a decent ambulance proud.  She stood to examine him and without warning, she flashed her penlight into one pupil and away, and then the other.  Oliver flinched made a small sound of distress.

“Could we not...do that again?”

“I don’t know,” she said equitably.  “Are you going keep lying to me?”  There was a long moment of silence.  Felicity could hear Diggle shifting his weight behind her, but she held Oliver’s gaze.

“Miss Smoak,” he started.

“Doctor,” she said flatly.  “I am a doctor and I have been working in this neighborhood for six months and the last two of them I have done almost nothing but collect toes and keep people from overdosing on vertigo.”  She sighed.  “I’m not asking because I’m going to make a value judgment.  I’m asking because I need to know how much you took, when you took it, and what other recreational and especially intravenous drugs you use.”

“I am not an IV drug user,” Oliver said calmly.  “I got dosed.”

“This,” she gestured with her hand at his whole, gray, sweaty person, “is not something that happens with oral use.  Your brain is losing its shit because somebody dumped a bunch of hallucinogenic garbage directly into your bloodstream.  I would guess within the last twelve hours.”

Diggle cleared his throat.  “He was dosed, Doctor.  I was there.”

She didn’t look away from the patient.  “So you, Oliver Queen, nightclub owner, and man of a certain physical...stature, do not use any recreational drugs, and somehow within the last twelve hours, someone else subdued you and administered it.”

“I’m very particular about what I put in my body.”

Felicity, through great force of will, held her tongue.

“It’s true,” Diggle said.  “He’s been straight as a...straight since he got back.”

Oliver clenched his jaw so tightly that she could see the muscles jumping there.

“Okay, then,” she said and nodded slowly.  “How many hours ago?”

“About ten,” Diggle said.

“Did you lose consciousness at any point?”

Oliver looked back at his bodyguard.

“Around four thirty this morning,” he supplied.  “For about three hours.”

“You should really be in a hospital.”

“That’s...not an option right now.”

“How long do I have you for?” she asked.

“Two hours,” Diggle said firmly.  It was clearly a compromise between the two of them, and neither was particularly pleased.

“Okay, then.”  Felicity smiled suddenly.  “Take off your clothes and get in my bed.”

Diggle choked.

Oliver tilted his head, just a little, and smiled, but didn’t move.

“I wasn’t kidding.  Strip or be stripped.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Diggle said.  

“Can I keep my boxers on?” Oliver asked, resigned.

“For the moment.”

Felicity knelt next to her suitcase and tried mightily to respect the patient’s privacy.  It wasn’t strictly stated in any code of ethics, but she was fairly certain that she was not supposed to be confirming her suspicions about the firmness of an unwell man’s tuchus.  Check.  Do not palpate the tuchus.  She put her supplies in order and heard Diggle helping him undress.  She guessed that balancing on one leg at a time was giving him some trouble.

When she stood up, Oliver was sitting on the edge of her bed, breathing shallowly, and looking totally miserable.  She looped the stethoscope around her neck and approached and--holy bejeezus fuckballs.  He was a bronze god--and he was covered in scar tissue.  Do. Not. Touch.  He swallowed, carefully.

“Nausea?”

“Yeah.”

“Lightheaded?”

“Yeah.”

“Any fainting?”

“I was...briefly unconscious on some stairs.”

“Okay.  Mr. Diggle?”

“Please, call me John.  Or Digg.”

“Digg.  You strike me as handy gentleman.  Do you know how to start an IV?”

“I do indeed.”

“Hang a bag of Ringer’s if you would be so kind.  There’s a trunk at the foot of the bed.”

“Yes, Doctor.”  Diggle was competent and brisk--combat medic, if she had to guess, just like Sandoval.  In a few minutes, Oliver was reclining, barely, against the pillows.  She had no headboard of course, but it didn’t seem to bother him, nor did the large squishable stuffed pig in the corner nor the tattered bunny rabbit lying near his foot.  

“I’d like to give you some Zofran, for the nausea.  Dizziness is a common side effect, but honestly not sure you’d notice.”

“Do it,” he said.

“You really need to eat something before you go.  Is there anything you--”

“No.”

Felicity sighed and looked over her shoulder at Digg.

“I’m on it,” he said.  “I probably need to move the car anyway.”  Wordlessly, he lifted an eyebrow at her.  She gave him a thumbs up.  “Make sure you lock the door behind me.”  Felicity rolled her eyes, but she made sure to throw the bolt.

“I’d like to check on how your heart’s doing,” she said, returning to the bed.

“Knock yourself out.”  Oliver’s eyes were almost shut.

“How’s that Zofran treating you?” she asked, pulling the bulkier pieces of equipment out of her suitcase, including her small ECG setup, which went beside the bed on her nightstand--which was also a trunk full of disposable gloves and masks.  She hoped he didn’t notice how much of her furniture was just trunks stacked on top of each other.

“Better.”

“I’m glad to hear it.  I’m going to go ahead and attach some electrodes and leads, okay?”

“Is that necessary?”

“Well, two weeks ago a nineteen year old kid using a vertigo cocktail became tachycardic in the clinic and I got to pull out the crash cart and use the paddles on him.  First time since my cardio rotation.  Just like riding a bike.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Touching someone, even Oliver Queen, in a medical context was not as titillating as certain daytime television shows would have you believe.  Felicity’s hands, as she affixed electrodes and attached leads, were concerned with accuracy and fact-finding only.  It took her a moment to realize that her patient might not be having the same experience.  His face was impassive, but the goosebumps on his skin followed her hands.  When she reached the precordial electrodes, she couldn’t help but notice the star like tattoo, or the fact that his nipple was noticeably...perky.

Keeping her mouth shut, not rushing to fill the vacuum, was a Herculean task.  It was a credit to the faculty of the A.T. Still University that their professional standards had been impressed upon and then beaten into her.  Her advisors, at one point, had recommended that she go into gerontology--senior citizens were notoriously uncensored themselves and therefore blessedly tolerant of filter-free physicians.  The truth was, it wasn’t unusual for patients to become aroused when a doctor or nurse laid hands on them.  Bodies were bodies.  But as Felicity attached the last of the leads, she was approaching an uncomfortable truth: her own body was being a body at the same time that his body was very clearly being its own body.  So.  Stand up.  Look at the ECG screen.  Just.  Look.  At the screen.  Only the screen.

“Hm,” she frowned, blessedly and immediately distracted.  “You’re throwing a few PVCs.”

“You don’t say.”

“Preventricular contractions.  Sometimes it feels like your heart literally skipping a beat.  You had a physical exam when you...got back?”

“I had the works.”

“No heart trouble?”

“None.”

“It’s probably the drugs and the dehydration.  And the not sleeping.  Are you under any unusual stress?”  She turned just in time to see him raise an eyebrow.  “Sorry.  Right.  How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be,” she said without thinking, the same thing she’d said a thousand times to Marisol and Neal and all the other fine people of the Glades.  “I mean.  It’s just you and me and the ECG.”  There was a long pause.

“Well.”  Oliver cleared his throat.  “I’m trying to open a club in a building that just got torched, my stepfather is missing, and my little sister may go to prison.”  Incongruously, he was smiling.

“So, no stress then.”

“Nope.”

“Maybe you should take up some sort of activity,” she said innocently.  “Power-walking, that sort of thing.”  That earned her another smile--and a feeling inside like the best sugar rush of her life.  “If you feel your heartbeat skipping, or it gets difficult to breathe, or if you feel like you might otherwise be approaching a cardiac event, please tell Mr. Diggle and let him actually take you to an actual hospital.  Now, I’m going to pull up a chair and watch your ECG and you’re going to close your eyes until he gets back with lunch.”

“I don’t really...take naps.”

“So meditate.  Close your eyes and think about...I don’t know.  I mostly think about anatomy.  What do club owners think about?  Body shots?  The proper body mass of their bouncers?”

“Have you ever been to a club?”

“I mostly studied in college.”

“I did not study at any of the four schools that I dropped out of.”

“Okay, let’s try this another way.  Close your eyes.  Go on.  I’m the doctor here.  Now take a deep breath.  And another...and another.  Imagine that each breath is a wave on a warm, white, tropical beach.  And every inhale the waves pull out a little into the water, which is very clear, and now when you exhale the wave washes up on that white sand.  Inhale and the wave goes out and you can see all the little pieces of stone and shell that sparkle in the sand.  And exhale and the cool water slides back over them…”

It took about five minutes of blathering on about waves and sand and sunshine before Oliver twitched and relaxed and nodded off.  Felicity had always been a champion talker.  She kept talking about warm sand under foot and shady trees and then she even moved onto the virtues of hammocks, all while she texted Digg: _Circle block.  Patient sleeping.  Return with minimum two milkshakes at two hour mark._


	8. Chapter 8

_ You as Osteopath machinists can go no further than to adjust the abnormal condition, in which you find the afflicted.  Nature will do the rest. _

-Andrew Taylor Still

  
  


**Starling 2013**

Felicity was running on fumes.  Probably literal fumes.  The fumes of starvation and exasperation mixed with shitty coffee.  As a condition of her residency, she had to spend a certain amount of hours being supervised by doctors with more experience.  As a result, she spent a few weekends a month on duty at Starling General.  Because she was more or less an independent operator, they scheduled her like one: swing shifts and full moons.  And people who didn’t believe in the full moon could just go ahead and bite her.  Public servants and retail employees knew the truth.

By the end of her shift, she’d seen the following: a homeless man with actual maggots living inside his foot, two conspirators breaking into a bag of hand sanitizer to drink it, a woman eating crayons who was convinced she was pregnant with Daniel Craig’s babies, a man who swallowed a rapala, and an extremely inebriated woman singing “On My Own” at the top of her lungs.  She had great pipes, actually, but there were only so many times you could hear it.  Regardless, it was going to be stuck in her head for days.

Dinner had not been equal to the task, a sad bag of sour cream and onion chips. She didn’t even like sour cream and onion, but it was the only flavor that the thrice damned vending machine would produce, no matter how many times she paid for animal crackers.  A terrified intern had shared half a candy bar with her sometime before three and then she was able to steal a black coffee from a surgeon called in to an emergency aortic repair.  The sun was was rising and she was starving, sleep-deprived, and desperate to get out of her scrubs which she had been wearing for 14 hours and which had begun to take on the odor of the Anne Hathaway wannabe.

She was finally able to clock out as the morning shift arrived.  Happy, shiny people, the morning shift.  Her phone beeped at her just as she was climbing into her aged hatchback.  It was the voicemail notification for Kuttler Cosmetics.  None of the other women in her network of ‘cosmetologists’ had listened yet.  She hit play at once.

“Hello,” said a shaky voice.  “My name is Marisol and I’m ready to make my appointment.”

Thank the merciful G-d.  Felicity called back right away and put on the best perky blonde voice she could muster at dawn which was...not very perky.

“Hello, Marisol.  This is Bobbi Brown with Kuttler Cosmetics returning your call.  Is this a good time to schedule an appointment?”

“He’s not here,” Marisol said flatly.

“Oh hallelujah.”  Felicity heaved a sigh of relief.  “How soon can you be ready to leave?”

“Now.  Now.  It has to be now.”

“I’m coming to you--I’m not far.”

“I couldn’t find a carrier for Bunny.”

“That’s okay.  Put Bunny in a pillowcase be ready to roll.  I’ll be there in ten.”

Felicity hung up and dialed another number while she threw her car in reverse.  She hit speaker as she peeled out of the garage, giving the booth attendant a cursory wave.

“Oh my shit,” said a bleary and pissed off voice.  “Who the hell are you and what do you want from me?”

“It’s Felicity--blonde doctor, glasses.  We met at the CNRI benefit?”

“Okay...blonde doctor.”

“Remember when we were talking about my clinic and my side project helping domestic abuse survivors and you said you’d do anything to help women in crisis?”

“I think so, bu--”

“Your guest room needs to be ready in the next couple hours.  Don’t worry, I know where you live and I’ll text you when we’re getting close.  Oh and there’s a cat.  See you soon.”  Felicity beeped off the call, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and shifted into higher gear.

She’d met Anastasia at the benefit and immediately identified her as a perfect mark: a rich do-gooder slumming it for a year pro-bono at CNRI, not yet worn down by the reality of her work, with a short-timer’s mindset and a spacious apartment.  The more Felicity thought about it, the better it sounded.  Anastasia couldn’t understand her clients’ needs if she didn’t spend any time with them.  Really, Felicity was doing her a favor.  That was her story and she was sticking to it.

“The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of...oh dammit.”

Marisol ran out of her building the second the hatchback was visible.  She had a half-full garbage bag and a wiggling pillowcase; she was wearing nothing more than a tank top, men’s pajama pants, and bare feet.  Felicity leaned over to unlock the passenger side door. Marisol looked totally blank, clutching the cat to her chest and shoving the garbage into the back of the car.

“Let’s go,” she said, voice entirely empty.

It took some doing, but Felicity eventually convinced her they needed to make a Target stop.  First, she ran in and bought a pair of flip flops and a sweatshirt.  Marisol slipped them on and they went into the store together, leaving Bunny to guard the car.  Marisol seemed to revive somewhat under the fluorescent lights and Felicity felt herself doing the same.  They got one of the big red carts and went up and down the aisles.  It was a ritual they were both familiar with, cruising and stopping at the end caps to see the clearance items and the impulse buys.  They got a cat box, kitty litter, some toiletries, a little makeup, tampons, and then they were finally in women’s clothes.

“He took all my shoes,” Marisol said.  “All of them.  Even my socks.”

“I’m sorry.  Let’s get more.”

Finally, Felicity made sure to pick up a duffel bag and backpack.  It had been two hours and the cart’s wheels were beginning to squeak under the burden.  Felicity suggested that Marisol go check on the cat so that she wouldn’t see the total, which ended up running to four figures.  Without a moment’s hesitation Felicity pulled out the Hood’s cash cards and paid with them.  She no longer cared if he had plucked them from the cooling bodies of drug dealers.  Marisol didn’t deserve to wander shoeless, with her worldly belongings in a trash bag, not when there was a choice.

They took some time in the parking lot, Felicity repacking all of Marisol’s things into the duffel.  He hadn’t left her very much.  Felicity put them all, old and new, into the duffel while Marisol sat inside and cuddled with Bunny.  Felicity made sure to slip a few more cash cards into the bag.  Then, mercifully, they stopped for food.  She was starting to get woozy.  They hit Big Belly Burger and somehow it was the afternoon by the time they made it to Anastasia’s two bedroom condo.  It was classy.  Like, granite countertops classy.  Felicity was a little uncomfortable, and she’d had the privilege of starting her day with shoes on.

She hung around, trying to get a read on Anastasia, on Marisol, even on Bunny.  Bunny at least was making herself (himself?) very much at home.  Anastasia was chattering a little nervously, talking about the frittata she was going to make for dinner and telling them where this or that was located.  Felicity was helping Marisol unpack her few things when the other woman turned to her.

“Don’t worry,” Marisol said.

“Worry?  About what?”

“Me.  I’m not going back,” she said softly.  “I’m done.”

“Good.”

“I’m done,” she repeated in tones of profound relief, her brows drawing together.  It sounded very suddenly, very true.

“Can I give you a hug?” Felicity asked.

“Sure.”

It was a really good hug and it kept her warm all the way to the car.  She started up, pointed towards the Glades, and began to hum softly.

“Without me the world will go on turning--for fuck’s sake.”

Felicity hadn’t seen her bed in thirty-six hours.  They had a date.  They had a rendezvous.  They had an assignation.  Maybe it was even a tryst.  There wasn’t sex involved, but it was going to feel just as good.  Possibly better, considering that the last sex she’d had was with--

Her phone fucking rang.  It better not be Anastasia.  The thing with the temporary do-gooders was that you had to strike while the iron was hot.  But surely the iron hadn’t cooled so quickly.  Felicity fumbled in her purse and finally found her phone.  She held it in her hand and it wasn’t ringing.

Her phone fucking rang again.  Sleep deprivation was a bitch.

“I’m coming unglued,” she said.  “Cracking up.  The cheese is slipping off my cracker.”

But it was true.  The phone was ringing.  But the phone was not ringing.  No.  Wait.  The other phone was ringing.  The  _ other _ phone was ringing.  She found it in the inner pocket of her purse and pulled it out, holding it up to her ear.

“Felicity?”  It was a man’s voice, undistorted, weak.

“Speaking,” she said, voice high.

“I need you.”

“Okay--okay--I’m on my way back to the clinic, but I’m still downtown.  It could be--”

“I’m in a parking garage.”  He coughed and it sounded wet.

“Where?”

“Downtown.”  Was he confused?  He sounded confused.

“Yeah, but  _ where _ ?”

“Queen Consolidated.  Employee parking,” he groaned.  “I think you need to hurry.”

“I don’t need to be told that!” she snapped and hit the gas.

 


	9. Chapter 9

_The art of medicine has its roots in the heart.  If your heart is false, then also the doctor in you is false.  If it is fair, then also the doctor is fair._

-Paracelsus

 

**Las Vegas, New Year’s Day, 2000**

 The wall of hot copper hit her as soon as she opened the door.  It was not a wholly unfamiliar smell.  But it had never been so...everywhere.  It was very quiet.  All at once, Felicity’s entire body prickled hot and cold and sweaty.  Her breath was suddenly shallow and fast which just seemed to suck the taste farther into her throat.  The hallway, in tasteful cream on cream, was pristine and silent.

She put the flannel cuff of her pajama over her nose and mouth.  Her small duffel bag, printed with butterflies, slipped from her other hand and hit the carpeted floor with a very quiet thump.  Her father had insisted on the carpet--wall to wall--in their new condo.  He thought it was classy.  Her mom thought it was hard to keep clean.  Felicity thought it was pretty stupid, since neither of them was ever home to get it dirty or clean it up.

Her father was on work-release some of the time or ducking his probation officer.  Her mom was always working, or sometimes sleeping.  Whenever they accidentally ended up at home together, they fought, and Felicity hid in her room.  They all tried to avoid each other.  That was why she’d gone to Ashley’s crappy Y2K sleepover.  Felicity didn’t want to play with makeup and she didn’t want to taste the warm champagne Ashley had smuggled into her house’s huge finished basement.  Felicity was a pity invite, the kid that all the moms insisted on including, but that was okay.  She needed to get out, even if it meant lying awake all night and listening to Ashley and Heather practice kissing with each other.  It was better than being at home.

Four years ago, her father had left and he should never have come back.  That’s what her mom always said.  But six months later he had returned, like a snake, oozing into every cozy corner that Felicity and her mom had reclaimed.  Their little apartment, their cheese and cracker dinners, their mom-and-daughter dates doing nails in front of the TV--all gone.  Later in her life, Felicity would be so grateful for this six months of memories and she would expend a lot of energy trying not to imagine what life would be like if she could have stretched those months into years or more.  Would she heave learned how to flat-iron her hair like other girls?  Would she know how to choose the right lipstick and walk in heels or how to flirt with boys?  Would someone have paid for computer camp or for a soldering iron to play with?

In the cream carpeted hallway, her little feet went forward, one at time, surprisingly steady.  She kept her mouth covered and she did not call out because she knew she couldn’t.  They had just been starting a fight last night when Ashley’s mom came by and picked her up in her big red Suburban.  Her father was on probation again and wasn’t working.  Her mom was working extra shifts and she was looking especially Las Vegas for the big night.  He didn’t like it.  Donna was tired and didn’t really care what he liked.  Felicity had been glad to go, at the time.  But now she knew she should have stayed.

The door to their kitchen was one of the ones that swung both ways.  Something was pushing ajar, into the hallway.  There was a large hank of strawberry blonde hair spilling out.  Something solid was behind the door.  It would not swing shut.  Something had stained the white carpet.

Felicity put her hand on the edge of the door and and pulled it open and saw both of them.  She dropped the door, stumbling back.  The door hit her mother’s head, knocking it slightly more askew.  Felicity stopped breathing for just a few minutes and then she was sitting on the carpet outside the kitchen.

Find a good grown up, was what her mother always said.  

She padded back to the front door for her duffel and took it into her bedroom.  It was untouched, perfectly ordered, the way her father preferred it.  Felicity set the butterfly duffel on the bed.  She pulled out her dirty clothes and dropped them to the floor.  She pulled her favorite clothes out of the dresser and the closet and put them into the duffel.  She added her spare glasses and her copy of _The Forestwife_ , which she hadn’t been able to start yet.  Finally, she peeled back her ivory comforter and tossed aside her pillow and picked up her Little Bunny.  Three years ago, Mom had given him to her after he’d left the first time.  It was from a book for kids, but Felicity slept with it every night.  She didn’t take him to the sleepover, though.  She didn’t want them to make fun of her, but she hadn’t been able to fall asleep without him, and now it didn’t matter what they thought. Little Bunny went into the bag.  She picked up her bookbag and zipped her duffel.

 _I might as well just stay where I am and be your little bunny_.

Felicity felt her feet picking up momentum.  She took her things and walked past the kitchen without looking and stepped into the condo corridor in her pajamas and sneakers.  She knocked on all the doors until someone answered.  Probably they were all hungover.  It was the accountant two doors down who answered.  He had a nice mustache.  He was nice.

“Felicity?” he asked, bewildered.

Her whole body held itself very still.  She looked over her shoulder towards her own front door.  Talking wasn’t working.

“Stay here,” said the accountant.  She saw him walk down the hall in his boxers and t-shirt.  He pushed her door open and pulled it shut again almost immediately.  “Jesus Christ.”  He hurried back to her.  “Honey, go inside.”

She did and she sat on his ugly brown sofa, which was also nice, and piled her bags beside her.  People came and went around her in a kind of blur that she couldn’t pierce.  She didn’t really hear their questions and she couldn’t find her voice to give them answers.  Finally, she pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her head on them and waited for someone to take her away to the next part.


	10. Chapter 10

_Finally, the great question would still remain whether we can really dispense with illness—even for the sake of our virtue—and whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge in particular does not require the sick soul as much as the healthy, and whether, in brief, the will to health alone, is not a prejudice, cowardice, and perhaps a bit of very subtle barbarism and backwardness._

-Friedrich Nietzsche  


 

**Starling, 2013**

Thank G-d she had stashed her Queen Consolidated employee badge in her glove box.  Felicity did work for QC, in the very loose sense, and at some point she had acquired photographic evidence of it.  Apparently, that was all she needed to get into the employee garage.  It did not boost her ego to see the many sleek, sporty cars that lined the garage like it was a dealership.  How were they all so clean?  Did they have an intern for that?  Did people without hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt just wash their cars whenever she felt like it?

Her Civic hatchback put-put-putted up and down the aisles of imported cars.  It was cranky in first, so she had to keep feeding it gas in second, and then backing off and throwing it into neutral.  More than one high-heeled, briefcase-carrying, designer-skirt having employee had looked askance and turned away, like her poverty embarrassed them.  Like poor was catching.

“Yeah, well, try parking your Mini Cooper in the Glades for more than thirty seconds and just see what happens,” she muttered, scanning the shadows between cars.  “Snobs.  When the revolution comes, we’ll see whose back is up against the wall.  Not mine, mes amies, not mine.”

As soon as she spotted him, it seemed impossible to her that no one else had.  He was camouflaged for a forest, not an underground parking garage.  But still he managed to wedge himself into a shadow beside a wall while some jackass in a thousand dollar suit strolled by not fifteen feet away, oblivious, face immersed in his smartphone.  The man in green leaned carefully, bracing one hand on the concrete, holding the other over his shoulder..  Very coolly, she pointed her car up, and then backed in towards him, shielding his corner with the negligible bulk of the hatchback.

She slipped out of the car as unobtrusively as she could.  She popped the back the car--the hydraulics were long gone--and she pulled the broken pool cue out of the trunk to prop it open while two women in peplum dresses click-clacked past the car.  She folded down the back seat, trying to make space for a full sized human to curl up, but when she looked back--

“Oh for the love of--”  He was sliding down the wall, a wide smear of blood above him marking his descent.  As she approached quietly, if not silently, in her Mizunos, she could hear him breathing rapidly.  She reached for the hood itself, knocking it back, and looking into the pallid, sweaty face of--

Oliver Queen.

“Oh, fuck me,” she said, pulling back slightly.  “Not--you know--shit.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Felicity,” he said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she whispered, pulling his hand slightly away from the hole at the junction of his neck and shoulder.  “I can’t see anything, but this is nasty. You need a hospital.”

“No. No hospitals.”

“You know, reporting the gunshot is going to be the least of your worries after you exsanguinate in your own parking garage.”

“My--my father’s old factory, in the Glades.”

“I’m a doctor, not a steelworker.”

“Felicity, you have to promise me that you are going to take me to my father’s factory and nowhere else.”

“Shit,” she hissed, thinking about how many ways this could go horribly wrong, beginning with his death and ending with her imprisonment.  “Yeah.  Promise.  This has got to be the stupidest--”  Her voice was muffled as she pulled her scrub top off. Underneath, she had a bralette and a tank top that probably should have been thrown away at least a year ago.  She reached into the trunk and pulled out a roll of duct tape. Balling up the scrub top, she pushed it (painfully) over the freely bleeding hole in his torso. Then she took the duct tape by the teeth, stretching and tearing it expertly, used it to secure the shirt firmly by taping loops around his chest and opposite shoulder.

“Duct tape?” he groaned.

“Sometimes my bumper comes off.”

Oliver, clearly woozy, eyed the hatchback with mistrust. Sure, the back door was propped with a broken pool cue and there was a carpet of paper coffee cups, but she felt strongly that assholes in green leather shouldn’t throw stones. She pushed the detritus aside, including Marisol’s abandoned garbage bag.

“Let’s do this,” she said. He was heavy--it was like trying to assist a mannequin filled with wet cement. At least the P90X was good for something. His blood was hot and tacky on the skin of her shoulder, reminding her of every bloodborne pathogen training she ever received. No one knew where Oliver Queen had been lately. She got him into the back of the car, which protested with a metallic groan. The interior now smelled like fresh blood and stale black coffee. When he was finally secure--he was bigger than he looked--she stood back a moment, wiping her sticky hands on her scrub bottoms and brushing the fresher blood off her shoulder.  

Absently, Felicity pushed her hair back from her face, leaving a streak there, too. She was just so tired, and now there was a dying vigilante billionaire in her car and she’d probably need to fill the tank tomorrow (did she have any gas money?) and this was definitely something she could lose her license for and all she really wanted to do was go to bed for a week and forget she’d ever gone to medical school. Felicity threw the garbage bag over him and pulled the pool cue out, letting the door slam shut. It wasn’t a long drive to bad part of town, but it was a very uncomfortable one. She was acutely aware that she was painted with blood, too much for a civilian, and that there was a murderer in the back of her car. To be fair, he’d never tried to murder her.

“This is it,” she said aloud. “This is the slippery slope everyone talks about.”

The factory-slash-club was dark when they arrived, but a side door was unlocked.  Somehow, he got to his feet, even though her makeshift dressing had done almost nothing to stop the bleeding.  He wasn’t talking, but he was able to move his feet under him at least as far as the coat check, where he dropped like a bag of sand.  Not good.  Hypovolemic shock.  Quite bad, actually.  

“Diggle!” she yelled, falling to her knees beside Oliver, applying pressure with her bare hands.  “John!”

Somewhere in the singed warehouse, a metal door flew open and slammed into the concrete wall behind it with a bang that made her jump.  Out the darkness came Diggle, in a shirt and tie and holding an automatic handgun in a very professional way.

“Put that down,” she called, “and help me.  He’s really heavy.”

The lair did not impress her, especially the elevated glowing table that Digg deposited Oliver’s body on.  It was not ideal and she did not have time to be kind about it.

“Is there oxygen? We need oxygen on him now, like right now. Like twenty minutes ago when I scraped him off the parking garage. What is this table, backlit? Is this Glamour Shots? Turn it off. I can’t see anything this way. Are there gloves, or am I freehanding this? I need an overhead light, something bright. A headlamp? Do you have a headlamp? Does this table lower? Fine, scoot him over, I’m getting up. Yes, on the table. I'm short. Take his pants off, would you, or I’ll cut them off myself. I want a blanket under his knees and over his feet. I want more blankets standing by. I need gloves and a light and please tell me there’s at least some plasma lying around.”

The autologous blood bank felt like the first helpful thing Diggle offered her. She had him hang a unit while she knelt beside Oliver on the table, headlamp on. Promptly, John handed her tools when she asked for them, even finding a small pulse-oximeter for her.  

“What a mess,” she muttered, finally examining Oliver’s shoulder. “I’m not a vascular surgeon, you know that, right? I’m going to have to start carrying oxygen in the car now and if someone hits me, I’ll just blow up and that’ll be the end of it. Do you have any dopamine? I would give my left foot for a central line right about now. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. Yes. Good. No chance you can run an ABG is there. Too much to ask. I know.”

The truth was that Felicity hated surgery. She was never able to totally distance the body part under the knife from the patient themselves. Trauma was all well and good. You just clamped whatever was gushing and sent the patient upstairs. That was the kind of medicine she liked: quick, clever, efficient. She did not like cutting.

That did not mean that she wasn’t good at it.

Felicity closed the wound with one more neat stitch, tried to lean back to take some of the weight off her knees, and just fell right off the Glamour Shots table. John, peace be upon him, mostly caught her before she hit the floor.

“Are you okay?” he asked nervously, helping her upright.

“Yeah, yeah.  No.”  Felicity took a deep and shaky breath. “I’m covered in blood and I haven’t slept in forty eight hours and I really wanted a blood gas and I don’t even have a patient history on him--does he have any history of seizure?”

“Um. No.” Digg did not sound 100%. “But I think I can find you some sweats. And there’s a shower we rigged up, too.”

The bathroom was tiny, but it was very clean. Felicity took of all her clothes and threw them directly into the small trash bin. They only had boy body wash, but Felicity scrubbed herself head to foot and didn’t care if she smelled like Alpine Speed Rush Mountain Juice. John had tactfully laid out a men’s undershirt and the clean sweatpants he had promised as well as what looked like some of his own dress socks. She rolled up the hem and the cuffs and stumbled back out into the lair feeling slightly more human.

“Pulse?” she asked bluntly.

“Elevated, but steady.”

“Temperature?”

“99.0.”

“I want to keep an eye on that.  Blankets?”

“Two.”

“No, I meant a blanket for me.  And a pillow.”

Diggle, may his blessings ever increase, produced a bonafide sleeping bag and a camp pillow. He did, however, look somewhat confused when she took them for herself and set up a little nest under the computer desk. She actually missed the on-call room.

“I was thinking all this would be more of a shock,” John said as she was zipping herself in.

“I did my trauma rotation at Cook County General. One night, this couple comes in just absolutely covered in blood, buckets of it, like they’d been attacked with a hatchet, or someone threw them through a plate glass window. Turns out they just wanted to have sex under a big mirror, but they’d put it up with masking tape.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Gotta have the right tools for the job. Wake me up if anything changes,” she said, turning over once and falling immediately asleep.

Felicity had the sense that Diggle was moving around her, that he might be performing other duties in their bat cave. But none of it penetrated beyond her on-call-room radar, until she heard his business shoes walking towards the table-gurney. Her eyes were open at once, and she popped up and out of her sleeping bag in a fluid movement she could never have performed if she were fully awake.

Oliver Queen’s head was turned to the side and his eyes were opened.

“I guess I didn’t die.  Again,” he said hoarsely.  “Cool.”

Cool?  Fucking cool?  Ad hoc surgery was cool? Oh and now he was struggling. She stepped forward and helped him to sitting, pulling the blanket underneath him up and around his shoulders. Behind her, Diggle was handing him something--a mirror?

“It’s not bad,” he said.

Not bad? A thousand insulting replies crowded into her mouth and she couldn’t bring herself to say any of them out loud. She looked down at her feet, swallowed by John’s Gold Toe socks.  It was happening again.  Say something, Felicity, use your words.

“It’s good work,” Oliver clarified, easing himself off the table.

Don’t stand up, she thought loudly. Just lay down. For like a few weeks. Stop getting shot.

“Does that mean you’re in?”

In? Like she was going to join his crusade? She opened her mouth, closed it, realizing there were no words there to come out.

“You’re practically an honorary member of the team already,” he continued.

No. She shook her head.

“No?”

“Um,” she cleared her throat and finally, finally, the words came out. “You...kill people sometimes. I’ll patch you up, of course, I always will. Both of you. Any time. But that’s it. I want my boring doctor life, when I can have it. That’s my offer.”

“Okay,” he said quietly, looking like a man who was probably still down a pint of blood.

She nodded, voice gone again.  Her hair was probably crazy.  She had a lot of sleep to catch up on.  She should go.  Felicity turned to look for her shoes.

“Felicity.”  It was a little unfair that he got to have such a perfect face and such a perfect voice. And his handshake was perfect, too, of course, along with every other stupid thing about him. “Thank you.”

You’re welcome, she thought, and couldn't say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things that bugged the shit out of me: that damn glowing table, the seizure for no reason, and the cardioversion. You can't shock a flatliner, people!


	11. Chapter 11

Felicity let herself in the side door of the club. Oliver had made sure she had all the codes and the keys just in case. He hadn’t asked her to drop by, but he hadn’t needed to.  Earlier that day, he had sent his long-ago-bro-in-arms Tommy Merlyn to the Queen Clinic.Tommy, who did not recognize her, needed an x-ray and a wrist brace. Felicity knew a nasty joint lock when she saw it. And, in combination with his reluctance to speak about it, she smelled a Hood problem.

She pattered down the stairs in her sneakers and slipped into the lair just in time to hear Digg, Oliver, and an unknown bombshell talking about locating a WITSEC safehouse. Suddenly, Felicity’s skin was crawling. _Bad juju. Very bad juju._ She was already in retreat when the gorgeous brunette spotted her.

“Get out. Get out.” Oliver said in his Hood voice.

Felicity did not need to be told twice.

 

* * *

 

“Smoak, I got a question for you,” Sin said, setting her phone down on the desk.

“Yeah?” she replied, distracted.

“It’s about straight men. You’ve slept with some, right?”

“Oh no,” Felicity groaned and covered her face. “Is this the birds and the bees? Do I need to get the props?”

“Seriously, Smoak. Is it true, that when they cum, they lose a little more brain matter every time?”

“Not...strictly anatomically speaking. But I don’t think it makes them any smarter,” Felicity offered.

“You know Roy, our favorite dumpster diver?”

“Of course--I love Roy. He brought me that roomba.”

“You have got to get over the roomba, Smoak. There are other electronic devices--”

“Moving on.”

“Well,” Sin spun around in her chair. “You know how sometimes I don’t tell you things, for your own protection?”

“Oh no,” she said again. “Is he in jail?”

“No, no, he’s not. Almost, but the rich bitch whose purse he stole dropped the charges, and then she offered him a job, but he didn’t take the job on account of jizzing his actual brains out, probably not inside this particular young lady, but you get the picture.”

“And then some, yes.”

“Anyway, the two of them are on their way over--apparently somebody tried to mug the rich bitch, Roy intervened, and he just texted that he’s a little bit stabbed.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Sin!” Felicity exploded out of her chair. “How many times have we talked about this--always lead with the emergency!”

“I was trying to ease you into the story!”

“Prep the exam room, would you?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As it turned out, the rich bitch was Thea Queen, Roy wasn’t so much stabbed as slashed a little over his ribs, and they were totally into each other. Teenage hormones everywhere.

“We’re not friends,” Roy insisted.

Felicity rolled her eyes as she turned away to grab the TDAP. High school had been a nightmare the first time around. She didn’t need to watch the show all over again.

“You are such a jerk. Roy? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing I just don’t see why I need a shot.”

“Don’t tell me a tough gang-banger like yourself is afraid of a tiny little needle.”

“Roy is not a gang-banger,” Felicity said firmly. If wishing made it so.

“Yeah, sure,” Thea said.  

“It doesn’t look so tiny.”

That’s what she said, Felicity thought, but definitely did not say.

“Just think about something else. Besides the needle.”

And then they kissed. Felicity was just a little less gentle than she should have been, sinking the needle into the meat of his upper arm. It wasn’t like he even noticed. Felicity looked up to see Sin standing in the doorway, making the universal sign for jerking off.

Felicity was tidying up, busy, so she actually felt the intruder before she saw her. She’d sent Sin home and then of course Thea and Roy had disappeared, probably to destroy more of his brain cells. It was breaking one of her cardinal rules: never close up shop alone. But she was also glad Sin was not here for this. Felicity could feel the electricity moving up her spine. _Bad juju_. Felicity bent her knees slightly, reached for her scissors, and turned.

“I don’t think we had a chance to be properly introduced this morning,” said the woman from the lair, who not so coincidentally, looked like she walked out of an Italian renaissance painting.

“Hi,” Felicity said flatly. “I’m Felicity.”

“I didn’t know Ollie had a thing for nurses.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m a doctor. What is it you do for a living, again? C-list dominatrix?”

Oliver arrived about twenty minutes later, bursting through the door of her tiny apartment. She’d left it unlocked, in the likely event that he decided to kick it down after he got her text: _Are you missing someone?_ He didn’t seem like the knocking type to her.

“Felicity?” Oliver yelled, like he was there to rescue her.

She did not need rescuing.  She was just sitting at her work table, holding an ice bag wrapped in a towel to her fat lip, her foot propped up on one of her drug trunks with a similar ice bag on it.

“I’m here.”  He rushed over, putting warm hands on her shoulders. “You okay?”

“Fine,” she said carefully around her bruised face.

“You okay?” he asked again.

“Fine,” she said a little more loudly, pulling the ice away.

Digg flew in the door next, gun drawn again.  “I got your call,” he announced.  “What happened?”

“About that,” Felicity said. “Either of you missing one crazy bitch, looks like she wandered out of a Botticelli painting?”

“Helena,” Oliver said.

“What happened?”

“I chased her off.”

“You chased her off,” Diggle said skeptically.

“She left after I took that,” Felicity said, pointing her chin towards the small garbage can beside the front door. Diggle looked in and his eyes widened.

“Good gravy, woman. Is that her hair?”  He picked it up with a thumb and forefinger--a very large clump of formerly perfect brown hair came out with it.  “Oh no,” he said, catching sight of the skin attached.  Immediately, he dropped it back in, scooting away.

“I think I ruined her keratin treatment,” Felicity said smugly.  “And then I broke a toe kicking her. I’ll tape it up when the swelling goes down.”

“Where did you learn to to fight like that?” Oliver asked, looking askance at the trash can and its contents.

“Those records are sealed, officer,” she grinned, accidentally splitting the lip open again.  “Ow--oh, ow ow ow.”

Diggle tore off a paper towel from the roll on her counter and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said, slightly muffled, as she dabbed at the lip again.  “So who is Helena and what does want?”

“Helena is Oliver’s psycho ex-girlfriend.”  Diggle looked amused.

“Well that explains the crossbow, anyway.”

“And she wants my help to find her father,” Oliver said.

“Jeez.  She must really miss him.”

“To kill him,” Oliver clarified.

“Oh.”  Felicity shrugged, reapplying the ice.  “Are you gonna do it?”

“That is the sixty-four-thousand dollar question,” Diggle said quietly.

“Well, keep your eyes open for a hottie with a bald spot,” she said cheerfully.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Oliver asked.

“I’ve had worse.”

Diggle and Oliver exchanged a look.

“Go, catch Venus on the Half Shell.  I’m fine.  Lock her up.”

But, of course, they didn’t.


	12. Chapter 12

_Ketamine was introduced by God to give dead people a means of communicating with us, the living._

-David Woodard

 

**Sterling, 2013**

Felicity fumbled after the ringing Hood phone.  She squinted at the alarm clock, squinted harder--still three AM.

“Please tell me this is an emergency.”

“We got a problem,” Digg said.

“Where’s he hit?” Felicity sat upright. “Where is the bullet? What’s his pulse? Curare? Where is he?”

“Down, girl. Not that kind of problem.”

“This does not sound like a three AM emergency, John.”

“Vertigo’s back.”

“Oh.” Felicity threw herself back onto the pillows. “No. No, no, no. John. I can’t do that again.”

“I know, I know. We’re working on it.”

“You don’t know,” she said and sighed. “Digg, I--”  Oh what the hell.  It was the middle of the night, no one could see her, and it was John she was talking to. “Six months ago, I was scraping kids off sidewalks. I didn’t always get there in time. Sometimes I just sat there waiting for the coroner.”

“We are not going to let that happen again,” he said.

“I hear a but coming.”

“But a girl did die tonight. Directly after leaving Verdant.”

“Don’t tell me.  Lance is back?”

“In a big way.”

“We need to talk.”

“The club’s going to be too hot for a while.”

“Do you think Carly would open up early for us?”

“For us? No. For me? Absolutely.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity looked down at her Big Belly menu. She wanted...one of everything. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d treated herself to anything other than a cup of coffee. What she wanted was one of everything. What she could afford, however, was another matter. She’d just paid off her credit card for getting the bumper more permanently affixed to her car. And then there was the transmission. Carefully, she set the menu down.

“Oliver’s buying,” Digg said.  He was sitting across from her and Oliver was next to her in the booth, on the outside.

“Hallelujah. Do you think Carly would swirl all three milkshake flavors together for me?”

“You can have more than one milkshake,” Oliver said.

“I like them all together,” she mumbled.

“You can have them all together,” Digg said, shooting a look at Oliver.

Carly was nice and beautiful and she was totally sweet on John, who seemed somewhat uncomfortable with the situation.  Not only was Carly willing to make a vanilla-chocolate-strawberry milkshake, she was willing to make it bottomless.  Carly was Felicity’s new favorite person.

“So,” Oliver said, looking at her pointedly. “We need to talk about the new vertigo.  It’s more addictive, more unstable.”

“Okay, what are you thinking, we should pay the count a visit?” John asked.

“He was my first visit. Waste of time. He’s…”  Oliver made crazy fingers next to his head.

“So you know,” Felicity put in, “we prefer the term ‘on a break with reality’ or ‘decompensated’ or even non compos mentis.”

“Since he was the only one that knew the formula for vertigo, we’re at something of a loss,” Oliver turned to her. “I’m hoping you can help.”

“Of course--although I’m not sure how much I can do.  If you could get a copy of the coroner’s report, I could do a little sleuthing.”

“Actually.” Oliver clasped his hands on the table. “We need the names of some dealers.”

“Well...I don’t use vertigo.” And then the other shoe dropped. “Oh. Ohhh. You want me to narc on my patients.”

“No, no,” Oliver rushed to say. Diggle was studiously silent.

“Yeah, you do. You want to know things that may or may not have been revealed to me in an exam room, while I was wearing my white coat.” Suddenly her milkshake tasted sour.

“We just want to know who in the Glades might be able to help us find the Count.”

“Yeah, I’m done here.”

“Felicity--” he turned to face her, blocking her more fully inside the booth. She felt her pulse pick up the pace.

“Get out of my way,” she said.

“Oliver,” Digg warned.

“This drug almost killed my sister,” Oliver growled.

“No, no, and no,” Felicity said, in her loud voice. “First of all, your sister almost killed herself with her own luxury automobile. Second of all, I will not violate federal, state, and local laws not to mention my professional code of ethics, for you, or any other man alive. Finally, and most pertinently, when your scorched ass was choking to death on my porch, I told you the truth: I don’t say jack about shit.”

“Scorched?” Digg raised an eyebrow. “Did I miss something?”

“I need names.” Oliver leaned in.

“You need to get out of my way.” She was starting to sound shrill--her palms and armpits were cold and sweaty. Being crowded was not a good look on her.

“This city needs--”

“Oh, fuck it.” She picked up the best milkshake of her life and dumped it in his lap. His crotch suddenly and precipitously chilly, Oliver pulled back, giving her enough room to scramble up and climb over the back of the booth.  Luckily, there was no one in the booth behind them.

Diggle was already on his feet, saying her name.

“Stay away from me,” Felicity said. “I am not your sidekick and I am definitely not your snitch. I don’t know what’s more offensive, the fact that you thought that you could buy me, or the fact that you could buy me with brunch. Just...fuck right off, the both of you.”

Digg probably would have followed her, but Carly had appeared from the kitchen to lay a hand on his arm.  Oliver, lap full of ice cream, didn’t move at all.

 

* * *

 

She was in bed, cuddling Little Bunny, feeling terrible about everything.  Not only had brunch been awful, but she had returned to the clinic just in time to find out that her college town was on lockdown after a bombing at the Boston Marathon. It was an unofficial bank holiday in the city. No matter what school you attended, your professors didn’t seriously expect you to attend class.  Felicity and her roommates spent the day drinking screwdrivers and and hanging out of their windows, screaming encouragement at the runners who passed just below them. And now, someone had turned the finish line into a crime scene.

Then she’d had to go and finish the rest of her terrible Monday at the clinic, wondering what fresh hell was next. Instead of doing anything productive after work, Felicity had taken a shower, opened a beer, and crawled into bed at about eight. She pulled out her DVD case and started season one, episode one of _Veronica Mars_ and let the Dandy Warhols wash over her.

One of Veronica’s teacher was explaining literature: “I think what Pope’s saying is that the thing that keeps us powering through life’s defeats is our faith in a better life yet to come.”  Felicity hugged Little Bunny harder.  She had just gotten to her favorite part, with Cliff the lawyer, when her Hood phone rang.  She sighed and picked up.

“Do I need to give the speech again?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” Diggle said. “Question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Hypothetically, if a man was knocked unconscious, forcefed new vertigo with a side of chlorpromazine, but puked most of it up pretty quickly, what warning signs should I be on the lookout for?”

“Are you in the car?” Felicity asked, giving a truly heroic sigh.

“Yeah, he can’t balance the bike right now.”

“Bring him up.”

“You’re a good egg, Felicity.”

“Oh, Digg, I am so much more than that.”

 

* * *

 

The next time John called her, he wasn’t nearly so sanguine. Neither was Felicity, really.  Tommy had quit and gone back to his rich and creepy-faced father, Roy had caught a case of stupid (possibly from Thea Queen), and apparently the bat cave had been disassembled and reassembled at least once.  As a result, all of her equipment had moved and it took her a little longer to get herself set up the way she liked.

“You know,” John said, “you could just throw a butterfly bandage on it and call it a day.”

“First of all, I have never thrown a butterfly bandage on anything.  Second of all, I am going to make sure your noble visage remains handsome as always.”  It was a line designed to make him smile and it failed outright.  “Digg, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“My receptionist has a theory about what happens to men’s brains during the act of copulation.”

“What brains?” he asked, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“That’s what I thought.” Above them, the electronic door lock disengaged and reengaged.  He was back, footfalls clattering down the stairs.

“What happened?” Oliver asked, or maybe the Hood.

“You didn’t show. Things didn’t go well.” John’s face was made of stone again.

“Rasmus was skipping town and I had to re-prioritize.”

For once, Felicity was glad to feel her throat tightening up around her voicebox. She had a lot of thoughts about this and none of them were productive.

“Thanks to your new priorities, four agents are dead, Oliver.  You could have stopped the guy, ended this maniac once and for all.”

Oh. She hadn’t known about the agents. She tried to focus on Digg’s face, the perfect neat stitches she was finishing. Felicity hadn’t really seen Oliver since the night of his latest vertigo poisoning, and that could hardly be considered a social visit. He’d been mostly out of it, the Thorazine shuffle on full display, and she’d been occupied monitoring him for EPSE.

“Lawton got away?”

“You seriously think a man who goes by the name Deadshot was going down without a fight?” Digg turned away from his suturing and faced Oliver. “I needed you there, man.”

“Taylor Moore was relying on me, Diggle.”

“But this was never about that kid. He was safe under armed security at your house. This is about Laurel.”

Felicity turned back to her tray, setting down her instruments and trying to hide her curiosity. Laurel. The ridiculously attractive, definitely brilliant, goody-two-shoes, but somehow still sympathetic Laurel. Who was with Tommy and whose sister had gone down on the yacht with Oliver and his father. Sin was right. Someone should do a study on frontal lobe function and frequency of orgasm.

“Diggle, I made a choice.”

“I know. And you chose Laurel.  Always her. Everybody else be damned.”

And then Digg was gone. She wanted to put some Neosporin on him, and a real dressing, but he probably knew enough to do it for himself. Felicity turned her back to Oliver, tidying up after herself, studiously avoiding his gaze.

“Something to say, Felicity?”

“Nothing you want to hear.”

He turned away and then, very inconveniently, down next to a little nugget of anger she carried on John’s behalf, she found her voice.

“Actually.” She set the tray down with a small crash. “Actually, you know what? I think it’s great that you’re such good friends with your ex-girlfriend, who’s your ex-best friend’s current girlfriend. Did I get that right? I think I did. And where is Laurel, exactly? She’s not here. Is she the one who alibis you? Was she the one who pulled you out of the psych hospital last week, barely able to walk a straight line? And was she the one who found out the truth about your mother? Oh, yeah, Digg and I talked about that at our Oliver Queen sidekick club. We mix drinks and take bets about how disposable we are on any given day.”

If looks could kill, she would be deader than the dodo bird.

“Like I said.  Nothing you want to hear.”


	13. Chapter 13

_One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves._

-Dr. Carl Jung

 

**Las Vegas, 2003**

If there was a social worker in the state of Nevada that didn’t have the Serenity Prayer hanging somewhere in their office, Felicity Smoak hadn’t met them. She didn’t blame them. It wasn’t like it was a bad sentiment, really, just a pointless one. Things didn’t change. No one could change them. People who believed they could belonged in asylums, and apparently CPS. This version of the prayer, though, was a tacky framed version, in that font that all the Jesus freaks seemed to love. Like, cursive, but so much holier.

“Now, Felicity,” said the twenty-something behind the desk. “I have some good news.”

Oh yay. A new home. Felicity narrowed her heavily lined eyes at the woman, and crossed her legs. It had better not be with that slag over in Henderson. She had heard about that Henderson house and she would fake her own death before setting foot in there.

“--and then the guardianship papers will be finalized.”

Felicity was suddenly sitting very upright. She held up a hand, in the _wait_ position.

“I said,” the social worker’s smile was obnoxiously serene now, “that we’ve been able to locate your uncle,” she consulted her notes, “Duvid. And if you’re willing to wait in the office until his plane arrives, we can release you into his care.”

Donna Smoak had spoken the name Duvid aloud on exactly two occasions. Once, after six year old Felicity had stolen a pack of juicy fruit, Donna had told her daughter that she was just like Duvid--and then had refused to say who, exactly, Duvid was. The second time was shortly before her mother died, when she had told her husband that “Duvid was right about you.” Felicity had searched for Duvid Smoak online, and found nothing. Felicity suspected there was more out there, maybe at the library, on microfiche, but she didn’t have a car to get to the downtown library, and her father didn’t like her spending too much time out of the house anyway.

Felicity had suspected that Duvid was just another part of her mother’s rather obscure past. Donna had always had secrets. For example, Felicity never did get a straight answer on where the name Smoak even came from. She didn’t know why they ate shrimp, but not pork. Why her mom would work on Yom Kippur, but never the first night of Hanukkah. Why she could cook hamantaschen but not brisket. Why Felicity could never set foot inside the Flamingo, for any reason, at all, no exceptions.

Still, an uncle was a bigger thing to hide. Other people’s uncles showed up, occasionally, even if they lived on the other side of the country. Uncles wrote birthday cards, didn’t they? And if her mother had a brother, where had he been for the last three years? And for all the years before that? What if he wasn’t her uncle at all? Would this bible-thumping do-gooder even know? Still, the specter of the Henderson house of horrors loomed. She could always give him the slip, circle back to the Jesus freak’s office.

“Felicity?” the insufferable woman asked.  “Are you hearing me?”

Felicity rolled her eyes, nodded, and settled in to wait for this alleged uncle.

 

**Starling, 2013**

Oliver was waiting at the top of her stairs with a Nordstrom gift box when she trudged up after work. It had been a long and somewhat dispiriting day. Neal missed an appointment. Babies were missing developmental milestones. Felicity herself was missing...something. Sleep, maybe, or Vegas, or her mom.

“You look tired,” he said, as she gave him an up and down visual appraisal to see if there was anything bleeding, broken, or missing. Nope. Apparently intact.

Oliver looked tired, too, but in a wealthy work-hard-play-hard way. Felicity sighed, and wordlessly opened the door, letting him into the little studio. It was reasonably clean this time, although her Veronica Mars DVDs were scattered across her quilt, evidence of her ongoing funk and desire to go back to bed and stay there.

“Can we talk?” he asked, a little more cautiously.

“Sure.” She gestured towards the mismatched chairs at her work table and went to the fridge, returning with two of her good beers, Elysian Zephyrus in the bottle. Like a true former frat boy, he casually used the tabletop to remove the bottle caps. They clinked bottles and took a sip.

“You need my help.”

“Look...yes.”

She drummed her fingers on the table, avoiding his eyes.

“I won’t ask you to break confidence again.”

“That wasn’t an apology.”

“Felicity,” he grimaced, then clenched his jaw.  “I apologize.”

“Accepted,” she said at once and smiled. “What can I do for you?”

“Uh. Well. I’m hoping you’ll accept this as a peace offering.” He handed her the silver-grey box.

“What, and model it for you later tonight?” she asked, sardonic. A strange look passed over his face as she removed a very chic, very slit-up-to-there crimson evening gown. And, yes, there were definitely stiletto heels and chandelier earrings to go with.

“I can explain,” he said quickly.

“That would be my preference.” She set the box aside like it might actually blow up in her hands.

“I have a lead on Walter, my stepfather. I accessed an accountant’s laptop that revealed a two million dollar transfer on the day of his disappearance.”

“How are you breaking into these computers, exactly?”

“I have help sometimes from...like-minded friends.”

“Tell me,” Felicity leaned closer, lowering her voice. “It’s Oracle, isn’t it?”

His face was perfectly still.

“I knew it.” She smiled sat back, taking a satisfied drink of beer. “Okay, what’s Alonzo’s deal?”

“He runs an underground casino, very high stakes. My...our friend has given me a bug to plant on his office computer. But first we need to get to the office.”

“Well, then…” Felicity’s smile turned into a grin. “Looks like I’m going gambling tonight.”

“What? No. Absolutely not.”

“You can’t do it, they’d make you the second you got out of your car.”

“I’m not letting you walk-”

“Oliver, until the age of ten, I was raised by wolves and Vegas cocktail waitresses. I can count cards. I can hold my liquor. Believe me, I know my way around a casino.” A massive understatement, if there ever was one.

He glowered.

“It’s too bad there’s not someone else you could call…” Felicity leaned back, looking at her fancy new dress with something like...excitement? It had been a long time since she handled a deck of cards. Thinking about it made her feel wistful, nostalgic. “I can do this, Oliver. On my own.”

“I will be right there the whole time,” he said, making it sound like both a promise and a threat. It was kind of sweet, in a simple, male way. She cleared her throat.

“At the risk of ending up with an arrow in my eye, can I ask, when are you planning on making peace with Diggle?”

“He’s the one who left, Felicity. I did everything I could to stop him.”

“Except apologize,” she pointed out.  “You promised him you’d help him track down Floyd Lawton and you--”

“Made a choice than I can live with.  If he can’t, then I don’t need him.

“Oliver.” That was patently false and they both knew it.

“I need to get back to the club. Be ready at eleven tonight.”

That was another discussion over before it began. Felicity looked longingly at the dress. She was definitely going to need to shave her legs. She had a stop to make first though.

 

* * *

 

“What do you want?” Digg asked as soon as he opened the door.

“Oh, spare me the testosterone,” she said. “I just walked up six flights of stairs. The least you can do is offer me a drink of water.”

“You’re right. Where are my manners? Come on in.” His arms were just massive. Was he juicing? Should she give him a warning lecture about long term steroid use?

Felicity collapsed on his sofa, putting her tired feet up on the tasteful yet masculine ottoman that told her he was a bachelor, but along the way someone had taken the time to housebreak him. The water he handed her was very welcome and she wondered if there would be time for her to get home, shower, shave, and nap before she had to re-learn how to apply eyeliner.

“You know, Felicity, Oliver and I don’t need a relationship counselor.”

“That hasn’t been my experience,” she said, smiling. “He has a lead on Walter, so I’m going to an underground casino tonight dressed as Jessica Rabbit. Don’t you want to watch the magic happen?”

“Oliver put you up to this?”

“No.  He doesn’t even know I’m here.” She took a breath. “Look, I know Oliver screwed the pooch. Sidebar: did you know that the original phrase really was ‘fuck the dog?’ I know, right. Anyway. I just want you to know…”

Diggle raised an eyebrow.

“I’m trying to think how to say this so it seems less stream-of-consciousness and more coherent, but that’s never really been my strong suit. Oliver’s clearly got some trust issues and probably some PTSD and he’s picked some really unhealthy coping mechanisms along the way. My view, from the peanut gallery, is he didn’t mean to hurt you. He just…”

“Fucked the dog?”

“You see how bad it sounds when you really say it? Digg, he didn’t think he was going to get people killed. He’s kind of a jackass, but he never would have left you hanging if he thought you were in real trouble.”

“I don’t want a partnership with those kinds of qualifications, Felicity.”

She nodded. “And, I know Oliver’s religiously against admitting he’s wrong. But I think he needs you.”

“Yeah. And when Oliver is ready to say that, he knows where I live.”

“Fine.” Felicity sighed. “Sorry for bothering you.”

“It’s no bother, I hope you find him.”

“For what it’s worth, I miss you, too. And it’s not just because I think Carly is an angel from heaven. Oh--and, just in case it comes up, you and I are partners in the Oliver Queen sidekick club where we mostly talk about what an ass he is.”

“Good luck, Felicity,” he said with a warm smile.

“Thanks. I haven’t put my spanx on in over a year. I need all the help I can get.”

 

* * *

 

The spanx went on just fine, as it turned out, thank you P90X, but no bra she owned would accommodate the gorgeous and daring plunge of the red dress. So she improvised with surgical tape. To her surprise, the results were more than satisfactory. Certainly, Oliver seemed to think so, if the nanosecond of appreciation he allowed to cross his face were any indicator. Maybe it wasn’t appreciation. Maybe he was just surprised to see her in something other than t-shirts and scrubs.

  
“Just to be clear,” she said, “the plan is for me to get caught counting cards. And I really hate getting caught, for your information. Gambling badly hurts me. In my soul.”

“It’s just so you can get a friendly warning from Alonzo and plant a bug on his office computer.”

“Right. Which will hopefully lead you to Walter. That is assuming I get the friendly warning and the master kidnapper doesn’t take the opportunity to make me disappear.” Felicity was confident in her survival skills, but not foolhardy.

“Hey,” he said quietly, taking her by the elbow, “you don’t have to do this.”

“I know,” she grinned. “But G-d help me, I want to.”

“If anything happens, I’m right outside.”

“Can’t be worse than juvie,” she said under her breath.

“What?”

“I said, let’s do this.”

“You sure you don’t want a comm?”

“They always check for bugs.”

“But the password--”

“I got the password.”

“You--wait--Felicity--”

“I made a phone call.” Deliberately, she strode into the pool of light, where he could not follow. Her shoulders were bare, but the adrenaline kept her from feeling anything but the thrill. She walked with reasonable confidence on the high heels (she’d practiced for an hour before donning the spanx) and approached the muscle at the door.

“Password?” asked the muscle.

“Snapdragon.”

And then she was in. It wasn’t the best underground casino she’d ever been in, but it was far from the worst. Besides, she was wearing a dress that made her look like a million dollars and she was playing high stakes blackjack with someone else’s cash. Donna would have been proud. Smiling at the thought, Felicity approached the green baize table, pulled out a freshly printed fistful of Oliver Queen’s money, and blithely asked for a stack of high society.

 

* * *

 

She let the goons escort her back to her Alonzo’s office with her head held high, champers still in hand. His office was cheap looking, and far too close to the bathroom, which shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. Outside of Vegas, you couldn’t count on people to do these things right.

“What’s your name?”

“Donna,” she said.

“Do you know where the term 86 comes from, Donna?” Alonzo asked.

“Yes. It happens I do. Do you know which cards make up the Dead Man’s Hand?”

“Excuse me?.”

“Sorry, I thought we were doing trivia”

“Aces and eights,” he ground out, looking somewhat discomfited.

“Did you know,” she leaned in close, “the Dead Man’s Hand appears on the Las Vegas metro homicide insignia?”  With her right hand, she affixed probably-Oracle’s bug to his CPU. “Tell me. What do you have against slot machines? Do you hate fun?”

“Leave your chips and go,” he said.

Felicity smiled and rose to her feet.

“Oh, yeah, Donna, one more thing. The thing about card counters is that sometimes they work with a partner.” A goon was scanning her with a very clunky RF signal detector. There was, of course, nothing to find.

“Only amateurs need partners,” she said.  “And I haven’t been an amateur in a very long time.”


	14. Chapter 14

_In resigning ourselves to our fate without a struggle, we are guilty of inhumanity._

-Dr. Albert Schweitzer

 

**Las Vegas, 2003**

“You look just like Dine,” was the first thing her uncle said to her, once they were alone in the car. It was a staid, beige sedan. Anonymous and comfortable.

Dine? She frowned.

“Your mother’s name wasn’t always called Donna,” Duvid said. He spoke with a faint accent, one she didn’t recognize. And he looked like her mother--kind of. Maybe around the chin. Enough to convince her she could leave with him.

Felicity turned back into the road and sunk further into the passenger seat.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, glancing over at her. “There’s a good Chinese place by the apartment. And a little Italian spot. A Safeway, too, if you want to stay in.”

Felicity shrugged.

“Okay, then we get Chinese.”

She carried the large paper bag of takeout up a flight of stairs. Behind her, Duvid carried her butterfly duffel and school bag. It was a modest apartment in a modest part of town, with two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. It was very beige. Very anonymous. But comfortable, too, and clean. And when Felicity peeked in the fridge, it was full of the kind of food she usually only saw on diagrams in the nurse’s office.

“You can call me Fetter,” Duvid said. “When you’re ready to…”  He made a gesture in front of his mouth.

Felicity ducked her head. It only made it worse when other people mentioned it. She began unpacking their dinner

“My apologies,” Duvid--Fetter--said in a courtly way. “Your bedroom is on the right. It’s not very fancy, but I thought, this weekend, we can go to Bed Bath & Beyond and find some things for you.”

They spent almost a month like that, Fetter doing all the talking, mostly about himself, since she couldn’t tell him what they had in common yet. He worked in ‘casino security,’ which was a shady field if there ever was one. He could have been anything from a bean counter to a hit man, but he dropped Felicity off at school every morning and picked her up every afternoon after computer club or detention, whichever she happened to be in that day.

“I was thinking,” Fetter was saying, “that we should see if they have apples at the farmer’s market. I know they are not a desert food, really, but maybe they will have something. I know there will be wild honey, which is good enough for our purposes.”

Fetter Duvid was was something of a food snob and Felicity was a picky eater. He seemed to enjoy seeking out things they would both enjoy, although there were many nights she stuck with her boxes of mac and cheese rather than risk eating his food. She thought she could probably handle apples and honey, as long as he didn’t get carried away.

“I do not know if your mother made anything special for the New Year?”

Felicity shook her head.

“I think we will perhaps skip the fish head and proceed directly to the pomegranates. Honey cake, of course. I can’t believe your mother didn’t make your zayde’s honey cake for you.”

“We always had Hanukkah,” Felicity said quietly. They were the first words she had spoken in his presence since meeting him.

Duvid blinked several times and cleared his throat. “Of course. She used to grate potatoes for days to make enough for us.”

“She always just bought frozen hashbrowns.”

“Blasphemy,” Fetter Duvid said.

 

**Starling, 2013**

“What’s wrong,” was now how Felicity answered her Hood phone when it rang. The truth was, she was starting to look forward to it. Helping in the bat cave, in some ways, seemed like an extension of her day job. In other ways, it made the grind of addiction and malnutrition and diabetes bearable. She could address problems both chronic and acute.

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong,” Digg said. “Yet.”

“I do not like the sound of that.”

“Listen, we’re fixing to do something pretty stupid. I think you should be here when you get done.”

“I’m on my way now.”

“You don’t have to--”

“I do like to know what kind of stupid I’m signing up for. Should I bring anything?”

“Prozac,” Digg muttered.

“Oh...that kind of stupid.”

Hurrying down her stairs, she almost ran straight into Roy Harper and his new shadow, the doe-eyed Thea McQueen. The pretty gene was very, very strong in that family. It was actually sunny, and she had gleefully ditched her scrubs for a denim skirt with a frayed hem, her favorite Pink Funhouse tour t-shirt, and low tops. Oh, and a messenger bag full of prescription drugs.

“Looking good, doc,” Thea said, giving her a thumbs up.

“Smoak!” Roy said. “I’ve got an air purifier with your name on it. I think the wiring’s faulty, but I don’t think it’s anything you can’t handle.”

“Yay!” Felicity allowed herself a fist pump. “Would you mind leaving it on the landing? You caught me running out the door.”

“Us, too,” Thea said. “Roy’s on something of a mission.”

“Oh?” Why couldn’t he just get a nice job and a paycheck and maybe stop running into the SCPD quite so often. These men were going to give her an ulcer.

“Don’t worry,” Thea said, apparently reading her mind. “I’m trying to keep the wheels on this wagon. Can we tell her?” Thea asked, nudging Roy’s shoulder with hers. “Come on, it’s Felicity.”

Roy sighed.

“Okay, so,” Thea whispered, horrified and clearly loving it. “You heard about Unidac?”

“The research place?”

“The scientists, murdered. The research, destroyed. Arrows, everywhere.”

“It’s the copycat,” Roy said, stealing his girlfriend’s thunder. She elbowed him in the ribs. “What?”

“You two need to stay away from him,” Felicity said as sternly as she could, given where she was headed next. “He’s a dangerous man.”

“He saved my life,” Roy said quietly.

“I know. But he kills people, too.”

It was unpleasant, but it was true, and Felicity tried to keep it in mind as she descended into the lair.

“Hey, Felicity,” Diggle said.

“Hey,” she said, slipping into the computer chair and crossing her ankles. “What’s the word?”

“I was just telling Oliver that I’ve been tailing his mom and other than a few innocuous calls to Merlyn, I got nothing.”

“Why wouldn’t she call him?” he said blithely, in the tones of a man in deep denial or possibly on haldol. “They’re old friends. We’re all old friends.”

“Are you okay?” she asked, suddenly aware that the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling. It was the kind of preternatural calm that came before a storm or, you know, a beating. Unconsciously, she pushed off against the floor, scooting the chair away from him. She caught Digg looking at her from the corner of his eye. She stopped scooting.

“My mom and my best friend’s dad are involved in a conspiracy that may have dire consequences for the city.  And I’m pretty sure they murdered my father. I’m not planning on using the word okay again any time soon.”

“What do we know for sure?” Felicity asked.

“Malcolm and your mother are planning something for the Glades, which is why they had Walter kidnapped when he got too close.”

“We have to find out what the Undertaking is,” she said.

“I’ve got to ask her.”

“Whoa. No.” Felicity stood up. “The last time the Vigilante paid your mom a visit, Diggle and I ended up stripping you naked before pumping you full of your own fluids!”

Diggle coughed.

“I just want you to know that when I think these things, in a medical way, they don’t sound nearly as bad.

“This time it’ll just be me asking. Friendly mother-son chat.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity had sorted everything there was to sort. She’d set aside some damaged equipment that she could work on. Then she went to work on the computer. She’d taken some biostat and a little programming in college, but it had been a long time since her glory days at Rancho High’s computer club. Still. She didn’t like the looks of their VPN.

Four hours of YouTube tutorials and effort later, she was satisfied that all the guns were cleaned and oiled, the lair’s computer system was as anonymous to the outside eye as she could make it without going back to school for computer science, a lot of dusting had been done, and all the medical supplies had been set up just as she liked them.

She had just leveled up on Candy Crush when Digg appeared, in the Hood, sans sleeves.

“How bad did you hurt him?” she demanded.

“I pulled my punches,” he assured her. “I did!”

Which was, of course, when Oliver limped-- _limped_ \--in, face battered, favoring the same leg he always favored.

“Damn it, Digg! You said you were gonna pull your punches!”

“I did.”

“Sit down. Sit down!” she pushed him towards their little exam table. “What did he do to your knee?”

“I’m fine.”

“You split his perfect eyebrow, Digg! You and I are going to have a conversation about the use of anabolic steroids and their side effects with regards to Oliver’s face and your gonads.”

“Absolutely not,” Digg said.

“Seriously, put that knee up before it swells any worse.” Felicity cracked a cold pack and handed it to Oliver. He placed it on his bad right knee.

“We need to know more about UNIDAC industries.”

“Digg, I set up the tablet and synced it. Oliver, I want to see your ribs.” She reached for the hem of his shirt.

“I’ll just do that,” Digg said, picking up the tablet. “Oh. This does look better.”

“I’m fine,” Oliver said again, pulling down his shirt with the hand that wasn’t cradling his side.

“Oliver, I swear, if you don’t let me check your ribs, I’m just going to think about it on a loop and worry that you’re going to puncture a lung. I won’t sleep. I’ll just lay there. Thinking about your torso. Let me check your ribs, for the love of G-d, and I will be able to move onto something else.”

Oliver, defeated, surrendered the hem.

“Unidac,” Digg said loudly, “is a small research and development company specializing in seismic infringement.”

“Merlyn’s planning on leveling the glades with a device that triggers a manmade earthquake.”

“A what?” Felicity asked, gently palpating Oliver’s side.

“What else does it say?” he half-groaned, as she hit a sore spot.

“More on a stock auction and what the media’s calling--”

“The Unidac Massacre,” Oliver finished.

“There’s no way this timing is a coincidence.”

“Oh frak,” Felicity said. “Guys. The police suspect a copycat archer in the murder.”

“What? Where did you--” Digg started.

“I have my sources.” Snitches, she thought primly, get stitches.

“So the other archer works for Merlyn?”

“He’s the clean up crew,” Felicity said.

“Erasing all evidence this device exists so no one can trace the devastation back to him.”

“All right,” Digg nodded, “so you’re going to have a pointed conversation with Mr. Merlyn.”

“Well, even if I take out Merlyn, the other archer is still out there. He can set off the device. We need to find it. Then Merlyn can get his.”

“I need to make a call,” Oliver said.

“Can I talk to her?” Felicity asked, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “It’s just--I dabbled in computer science in undergrad, before I decided on pre-med. She was already a legend.”

“You know Oliver’s mysterious hacker friend?” Diggle asked.

“By reputation only. One time, I--”

“Fine,” Oliver said. “I’ll make introductions.

One time, Felicity had seen Ben Affleck at the Flamingo. She’d had to hide behind a slot machine until her calm had been restored and she could walk by him, gazing coolly out of the corner of her eye. Luckily, the lightly modulated voice of Oracle on the other end of the phone couldn’t see her fangirling while Felicity took down notes like it was OMED all over again. Of course, the end result was failure, but Felicity could care less since she walked away with a genius’ phone number.

“Well?” Oliver asked.

“She says unless she could waltz into Merlyn Global’s mainframe and plug in directly, there’s no way she can get that location.”

“Then we waltz.”

“Oliver. She did mention that the mainframe is located inside Merlyn Global Group’s main headquarters, on the 25th floor? It’s only accessible through a restricted access elevator.”

“I know. We’re going to have to break in.”

 

* * *

 

“I can totally sell this--I look good in red. Did I ever tell you I used to be a lifeguard?” Felicity was lying sideways across the backseat of one of Oliver Queen’s nicest four door sports cars with a large bag of Big Belly goodness in front of her. “They don’t encourage bright red in hospitals--it alarms the patients and families. But I used to wear it every day, all summer long. They said I had a real gift for spotting soused bachelorettes sinking below the surface.”

“Felicity?”

“Yeah?”

“Your work history is remarkable.”

“Thank you for remarking on it.”

“Are you ready for this?”

“I was born ready,” she said, biting her lip to stifle an excited giggle.

“Felicity.”

“No really. This is gonna be awesome.”

And it was.

“I have a super deluxe Big Belly Buster for a Mr. Andrews. I think he’s in security.” She leaned across the desk. “He a good tipper?”

“You can go on up, Mr. Queen,” said the annoyed security guard, before turning back to her.” You can wait a second.”

She dropped off the drugged lunch to Diggle, who gave her a wink and a decent tip, as it turned out. She hoped he didn’t expect to see that five again, because it belonged to her now. Time to rejoin Oliver. It was easy enough to slip into the elevator, but they were quickly followed by some bro in a suit. She pounded the close-doors button with intensity, but no luck. He came bearing file folders and truly terrible cologne.

“Hold that!” He stepped on and immediately turn to look directly at her chest and then her mouth. “Where you heading, sweetie?”

“19th floor,” she said, turning towards him, and meeting his gaze. Her hand was in and out of his pocket before he even looked away from her lips.

“Too bad I’m going to 13.”

“Oh,” she pouted, holding his eyes and quickly tossing his wallet underhand back into the lobby. “Oh no! Is that yours?”

"What the?" he hurried back into the lobby. And there was another mark disposed of.

“Nice,” Oliver said. “I was just going to go for the files.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. That was slick.”

“Mainframe’s on twenty-five, guys,” said Diggle. “That’s as close as I can get you.”

Oliver opened the ceiling hatch and climbed through like an acrobat. He offered his hand and she gripped him around the wrist, impressed against her better judgment that he was able to lift her entire dead weight on his own. It gave her a kind of fluttery feeling, until she realized her relative position to an elevator shaft twenty-four stories high. Oliver reached back for her and she took his warm and impressively not-fear-sweaty hand.

“Don’t look down,” Oliver said, shooting some arrow thing that did not look sturdy enough for the both of them.

“I never do. Because I’m terrified of heights.” Frak. Frak frak frak. “Can I close my eyes? I want to close my eyes.”

“Hey, Felicity.” He scooped one iron arm under her rib cage and ducked his head under her free arm. “You can close your eyes. Hold onto me tight.”

“I imagined you saying that under different circumstances.” He turned his head and she couldn’t tell if he was bemused or what. “Very professional, medical...circumstances.”

“Ready?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Come on.”

Technically, she hadn’t imagined him holding her. She’d dreamed about it. And no, the circumstances were not medical in the least, unless having a man hold you up against him, your legs wrapped around his waist, bare chests pressed together, while he nibbled on her neck could be considered medical. Certainly they improved blood flow. She closed her eyes and thought about nibbling instead of the yawning chasm in front of her. She did not open her eyes again until there was a floor underneath her feet again.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look a little flushed.”

“Yeah, this is my breaking and entering face,” she said, a little breathless. “I always look like this right before I...break and enter.”

“Security’s on a ten minute cycle.”

“Oracle said I should only need seven.”

“I’ll have my meeting with Tommy and be back in nine, okay?”

“Okay.” Felicity hoped she would be cooled off by then. She pulled up the bright red sleeve of Carly’s franchise jacket and looked at the crib notes she’d made along the inside of her forearm. Felicity knew she could do this. She’d crammed less for scarier tests than this. Of course, the future of an entire neighborhood hadn’t been riding on it. Her entire neighborhood.

“Guys, you got trouble,” Digg said in her ear.

“What?” she asked, interrupted mid-task.

“Felicity’s about to have some ahead of schedule company.”

“I’m not there yet on the download,” she said, consulting her arm.

“Hold tight. I’m on my way.”

Hold tight indeed.

“Felicity!” Diggle said.

“Just a few more seconds!”

“She’s going to get made, Oliver,” Digg said in her ear. “Oliver, did you hear me? Felicity!”

“What? Just a few more seconds! Come on come on.”

“You don’t have a few more seconds.”

“Fucking finally,” she muttered as the download completed, jumping to her feet and taking the tablet with her. And then, of course, she ran face first into Merlyn Global security. “Oh.” Plan B. She needed a Plan B. What would Fetter Duvid do? No, nope. Not helpful. What would Donna Smoak do?

“Damn it, Oliver, she’s in trouble. Where are you?”

Not here, that’s where he was.

“This is a restricted area. Let’s see some ID.”

“ID? Um…” She held her hand up to her face, knuckles curled towards her lips, like an underaged co-ed caught at a bar. “Listen,” she said. “I know I’m not supposed to be here. It’s kind of naughty…” Felicity cut her eyes away and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

“Oh, woman, no,” Digg said. “Don’t do this. I’m on the way.”

“Maybe, we could work this out, like, between us? Maybe there’s a broom closet with your name on it?”

The guard was thinking about it, she could see it in his eyes. Sure she was probably going to have to do something lascivious with her back up against a supply shelf, but she was not going to jail, and that was the important thing. Any closet in a storm.

“It’s kind of hot on this floor,” she fingered her collar. “Maybe we could go somewhere...lower?”

“There you are!” Digg said, stalking towards her. “Thanks a lot, man. This one snuck past security. One of Merlyn Junior’s bimbos. She’s pissed he never called her back.”

“Copy that,” the guard said, stepping away from her. “I read the tabloids.”

“Thanks again. Let’s go, Barbie,” he took her firmly by the upper arm. “Your last name ain’t going to be Merlyn.”

“But I love him! He’s my man!” Felicity squeezed his arm back

“And you’re going to give me a damn ulcer. Naughty schoolgirl? Really?”

“What can I say,” she batted her eyelashes at him. “I play to my strengths...Daddy.”

“You are a bad woman, Smoak.”

“And you’re my knight in shining armor.”

 

* * *

 

“In addition to the download, I also uploaded one of Oracle’s Trojans to Merlyn’s system. She figured it might come in handy and she told me how to use it.”

“That’s smart,” Digg said. “If Merlyn thinks he’s been compromised, it’ll help if we know first.”

“Can you locate the seismic device?” Oliver asked.

“I’m working on it, but there’s what you’d call a metric fuckton of data to go through.”

“You all right?” Digg asked, looking at Oliver. Felicity did, too. Maybe he looked less haunted?

“My father, he told me that he failed this city, asked me to right his wrongs, but I never knew what he meant until now. It’s the Undertaking. I promised myself that when I crossed all these names off the list I’d be done, but...taking down these people, it doesn’t honor him. I was just treating the symptoms while the disease festered. I stop the Undertaking, I wipe out the disease.”

It wasn’t a very accurate metaphor, but she managed to keep her mouth shut.

“What are you saying, Oliver? You would hang up the Hood?”

“Merlyn’s plan is what I returned from the island to stop.” He rose to his feet and headed for the exit.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

They waited until he was through the door before they turned towards each other, Diggle raising an expressive eyebrow.

“A hundred dollars on Laurel Lance,” Felicity said.

“No bet.”

It took a more than three more hours of sifting through the data, one coffee run, and one near meltdown over the magnitude of the task, but at last she gasped and whirled around in the chair.

“You got it?” Digg guessed.

“I got it. And I only had to call Oracle for help twice.”

“Great.” He pulled out his phone.

“Should we tell him yet?” Felicity asked.

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“Do you think maybe he might want a little more time…”  
  
Diggle looked at his watch and gave her a look of skepticism and dialed the phone.

“Well excuse me,” Felicity said to herself, “if I’m not in a hurry to break up his only apparent recreation. I don’t know, maybe he’s even a cuddler.”

“Felicity found the Markov device. Merlyn’s keeping it at a warehouse his company owns in the Glades.” Diggle gave her a look she couldn’t read. “Yeah, according to Oracle’s Trojan, Merlyn’s logged onto his computer from his office.  Copy that.”  He put the phone back in his pocket.

“What was that look for?”

“I think he was still at her place.”

“I told you.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t know!”

They laughed about it a little, and then Digg went out looking for the device, which wasn’t there. And then he went looking for Oliver, who wasn’t anywhere.


	15. Chapter 15

_ The miserable hath no other medicine, but only hope. _

-William Shakespeare

  
  


**Las Vegas, 2004**

When Fetter Duvid arrived at the principal’s office, Felicity was seething and silent.

“What happened, hinteleh?” Her uncle was dressed nattily today, his hair combed back, looking more like casino security than he usually did. He must have come straight from the Flamingo.

“Felicity hasn’t shared that with us yet,” said the supercilious, fatuous, vacuous Principal Hart. He looked down at her with the benevolent condescension of a suburban golf dad. She wished he would drop dead, hopefully of something painful.

Fetter Duvid ignored the other man entirely, looking steadily at her. Felicity took an unsteady breath and held up her right fist, displaying bruised, split knuckles.

“Ah.” Her uncle turned towards the principal. “I take it there has been an altercation of a physical sort?”

“Yes, unfortunately, it appears that Felicity assaulted a fellow member of her computer club without provocation.”

“Is that true?” Fetter asked her.

Felicity held up her left fist, also bloodied.

“Yes,” Principal Hart said. “The other student was injured.”

“And where is she now?” Fetter asked.

Felicity smirked.

“He,” Hart said, “went to urgent care with his mother.”

“And how old is this boy?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

Felicity held up a one, and then an eight.

“I want to make sure I understand the situation,” Fetter said, warm and reasonable and almost gregarious. “My niece, who is fifteen and I believe, five foot four inches, started a fight with an eighteen year old man?”

“That’s correct.”

She stood up and reached into the back pocket of her black jeans. Felicity retrieved something small and held it out for her uncle. He plucked a small Mogein Dovid on a broken golden chain.

“He grabbed it,” she croaked, and cleared her throat to speak better. “He grabbed it from behind and when I turned and slapped him he called me a  _ kyke _ .” 

Fetter Duvid did not respond with so much as the twitch of an eyebrow. He only sighed and turned back to the principal.

“You will inform this adult male and his mother that we will do them the favor of not pressing charges. You will remove this adult male from all of Felicity’s classes. You will suspend him for no less than two weeks. You will ensure that this remains on his record, and not on Felicity’s. And in return for all this, Felicity and I will not pursue a civil suit against the Clark County School District as a whole and against you in particular.”

Hart opened his mouth.

“No, no,” Duvid said. “Call your lawyers. Talk to your wife. Sleep on it. I would hate to see you do something rash. Felicity, come. We won’t trouble the principal any longer.”

As soon as they were inside their beige sedan, she burst into tears, and she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t the first time someone had called her that word and she knew for certain it wouldn’t be the last. The chain could be repaired--Fetter would probably do it without her even asking. But she knew Stevie. They’d been in computer club together for more than a year. They weren’t friends-friends, but they nodded at each other in the hall. She never thought he would use that word, to her, to her face. Not even hitting back made her feel better, no matter how well she hit.

“I know,” Fetter said, rubbing her back. “I know.”

 

**Starling,  2013**

Felicity was ensconced in her bed-desk-cocoon. She had the lair’s tablet attached to a bluetooth keyboard and she was trawling through data just like she had been, all night, while Veronica Mars played in the background to keep her from plunging headfirst into worst-case-scenario-generalized-anxiety-disorder-Felicity, who was no fun at all to live with. The show and the magic benzo she’d taken very shortly after Oliver went radio silent were maintaining holding down the panic, but just barely.

The good news was that there was a tracker in his boot. The bad news was, Felicity didn’t have her hands on the man attached to the boot yet. His ribs had been bruised and his knee would still be sore. What would Merlyn do to him? Digg would find him. Digg seemed particularly focused on this task in a military way and Felicity trusted him to get the job done.

Her Hood phone chirped and she her whole body jerked and levitated a foot off the bed, jumbling discs and cords and kettle corn crumbs. Hyperarousal was not nearly as fun as it sounded. She scrabbled in her covers for the phone and got it open.

“You found him?” she squeaked.

“Yeah, Felicity. I got him.”

“Thank G-d. Is he okay?”

“Mostly.”

“Okay. I’m on my way.” Mostly? What did mostly mean? She scrabbled in the laundry pile on her floor, coming up with mostly-clean jeans and a cleaner t-shirt that read:  _ Liberté, égalité, sororité _ . She stuffed a few things into her enormous purse, including both her phones, a small medical kit, and a green hoodie, and then she opened the front door. Once again, she was met there by an imposing man, but it was not either of the ones she was looking for.

“Miss Smoak,” said Detective Lance. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“It’s Dr. Smoak, and I have the right to remain silent. So…” She flipped him a very cheerful bird with her right hand.

“Charming. I hope your attitude improves by the time we get to the station.

She raised the middle finger of her left hand.

“Or,” Detective Lance said, “I can call up a friendly judge and get a search warrant for your little clinic here.”

“No judge would toss the clinic without probable cause.”

“Did I say clinic? I meant apartment.”

“On what grounds?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

If he wasn’t bluffing, she’d lose everything. Setting aside the penicillin and the prozac, there were enough Schedule II drugs in there for an intent to distribute ten times over. A hundred times. And what if they traced the provenance of those drugs? She didn’t know. She’d never asked. Oliver and Dig had never said. Job, career, license, all gone.

“You know what?” she said coolly, “I think I’m going in your direction after all. You can give me a lift.”

“Very smart, Dr. Smoak.”

Why did all cop cars smell the same? The stations, too. Felicity suspected that even without their polyester piggy uniforms, the cops themselves would still smell identical. Like graft and greasy coffee. As soon as she stepped into the interview, she felt her skin start to crawl. Felicity looked at the chair. 

“Please. Take a seat."

“You know, I think I’d rather stand.”

Lance slammed the door behind them--making her startle, again, fucking hyperarousal. But she wouldn’t sit. She jammed her hands into her back jeans pockets and leaned against the wall.

“Oh,” he said, noting the pose. “You’re a real hardened criminal, are you?”

“No, I’m not any kind of criminal.” Lies.

“What do you call aiding and abetting a fugitive from the law?”

“Sounds like something I’d need to talk about with my lawyer.”

“You got a lawyer, do you?”

“I’m sure Queen Consolidated would be happy to provide me with one.”

“Let’s talk about Queen Consolidated. I got a whole room of wet-behind-the-ears police academy brats going through CCTV footage, and you’ll never guess what we found. We have you on tape entering the Queen Consolidated garage on the night that Moira Queen was attacked by the Vigilante.”

“Was I there that same night?” Felicity asked guilelessly, mind churning. “That must have been when I went by to pick up my W2.”

“And can anyone verify that you visited accounting, Ms. Smoak?”

“It’s Doctor Smoak, Detective. And I don’t know. They were holding it at the front desk. Some EA handed it off to me--I don’t recall who. They go through them like water in that building.”

“Alright, Dr. Smoak,” he ground out. “And here you are leaving.” He pushed a grainy black and white photograph of her across the table. This time, her scrub top was off and it was just her, her very worn tank top, and quite a bit of blood.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“And what’s that all over your torso?”

“Motor oil,” she said blithely. This was like old times. “My car is kind of an antique, not the good kind, and it eats oil like you would not believe. I went to add more and, well, I’d just been on a really long shift, and I dropped the bottle.”

“And when I get a warrant to test those clothes?”

“Oh, Detective, I’m afraid I threw those away when I got home. They were unsalvageable.” Damn lies.

“You know what I think? I think the Hood was there when you went into that garage, but he wasn’t there when you came out.”

“The Hood.” Felicity sighed and crossed her arms, looking at the detective over the top of her glasses. “Shenk mir nit keyn honik un gib mir nit keyn bis.”

“I don’t speak German.”

“It’s Yiddish. It means: I don’t want the sting and I don’t want the honey.” Felicity pulled the chair out for herself and sat down with all the self-possession she could muster. “A vigilante is too much work, detective. Too much risk for too little reward.”

“I got all those new recruits combing through footage across the city, even in the Glades. By your bodega. Inside the liquor store. There’s even one a block up from your apartment in the alley. Tell me, Felicity. What am I thinking?”

“That I don’t scare as easy as you’d like.” Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

He leaned across the table, one hand going for his cuffs, and she knew that she was actually going to have to call Queen Consolidated and beg for someone to send a lawyer to defend her for doing her job, under extenuating circumstances. Hopefully mitigating circumstances. Exonerating circumstances?  Detective Lance’s phone rang.

“Saved by the bell,” he said. “It’s funny you should call.  I got your trusty sidekick sitting right in front of me.”

Felicity resisted the urge to huff and instead contrived to keep her face as blank as possible. Right about now, Oliver would be telling him that a manmade machine was going to start an earthquake in the section of the city least prepared to handle it. And, if she was eavesdropping accurately, it was happening tonight.

“What? Well, now you’re just trying to have some fun with me.”

“Sounds like you have bigger problems than me.” She uncrossed her arms, rose, and headed for the door.

“Don’t leave town.”

“You know.” She turned back with her hand on the door knob. “I used think the Hood was just a murderer. All I saw was the bodies he dropped. But it seems to me, whoever he is, has saved an awful lot of lives in the last six months and he’s going to save more tonight. Almost makes him a hero, doesn’t it?”

She couldn’t go straight to the Foundry. There was a non-zero chance that Lance would put a tail on her. As good an excuse as any for a coffee break. Felicity pulled out her own phone and dialed without having to look, walking purposefully in the direction of the nearest caffeine.

“Sin? It’s me. Where are you? Okay, good. Listen, who do we know who can drive stick? Does Neal know? I need you to ask Neal.”

“Are you overcaffeinating again, Smoak?” Sin asked. “We talked about this after The Red Bull Incident.”

“Something bad is going to happen to the Glades, Sin. Tonight.”

“No shit. It’s the Glades.”

“I need you to find out if Neal drives stick and I need you to get in the car with him and whoever else you can convince and get out of town for a few days. There’s a wad of cash in an empty body scrub jar in my shower. Take it. Get a hotel for you and whoever else.”

“Felicity?” Sin sounded, for once, 100% attitude free.

“Yeah.”

“You’re serious?”

“As a stroke.”

“Okay. I’ll find someone who can drive stick.”

“Thank you, Sin. Thank you. Be careful.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Well, keep this under your hat,” she improvised. “I’m at Queen Consolidated. I got invited to the briefing about this...threat. I’ll be safe.”

“You promise?”

“I promise,” Felicity lied through her teeth.

“No gods,” Sin said.

“No masters.”

 

* * *

 

“Oliver, Felicity may have found something.”

“This symbol is a map of the old subway tunnel system.”

“That’s what got us thinking the Undertaking is connected to the Glades.”

“What if it’s more specific than that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Prostate cancer,” Felicity said.

“Hoo boy,” Digg grimaced.

“Brachytherapy. Internal radiation. It’s used on less aggressive forms of the cancer. A doctor inserts radioactive seeds, usually four dozen or so, into the the prostate gland. They deliver a high dose of localized radiation, killing the cancer.”

Both men looked profoundly uncomfortable. 

“You take the therapy to the disease, to the weakest spot,” she said, frustrated that they were not interpreting medicalese correctly.

“Underground,” Oliver realized.

“Yes! This is a USGS fault map of Starling City. Our corner of the Pacific Northwest is relatively stable, but there are exceptions. This red line represents a small antithetic fault that runs below the Glades.”

“About a mile, the fault runs underneath the old tenth street subway line.”

“My money says the seismic device is somewhere along there.”

“I know where it is.”

Oliver’s phone rang. He grimaced and picked up.

“Now is not a good time...What channel?” Looking stricken, he turned to her. “Felicity, pull up the local news, please.”

There, in front of a microphone, was the perfectly styled, impossibly poised Moira Dearden Queen. And she was announcing to all and sundry that she had failed Starling City. Her speech, like her, was styled, blunt, and pointed.

“If you reside in the Glades, you need to get out and get out now. Your lives and the lives of your children depend on it. Please.”

“Oh, Oliver. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. She gave those people a chance.”

Felicity bit her tongue to keep from mentioning the cops hovering at the back of the Queens’ beautiful foyer. Maybe it was only in her family that the specter of incarceration always hovered, menacing. 

“I thought Merlyn broke your bow,” Diggle said.

“I have another.”

“I was going over the device schematics,” Felicity said. “Honestly, it’s a lot like a good coffeemaker. The device can be set for a timed detonation or can be remote activated by a mobile transmitter.”

“Something Merlyn could have on him.”

“Listen, Oliver, if we can just get our hands on this transmitter, maybe we don’t need to track down the device.”

What followed was the most bromantic exchange she had ever been witness to. Granted, she’d never been interested in the Greek scene, but she thought even they might find this a little excessive.

“It’s too big of an if, Diggle. I need you in the subway. Find the device. Disarm it.”

“So you can take on Merlyn by yourself?”

“I have to.”

“Oh, he’ll kill you, Oliver.”

“I know. He’s beaten me twice. And I don’t know how to stop him.”

“Ok well, how bout this time, you bring along something you didn’t have the last time you two fought -- me.”

“I can’t let you.”

“I can’t let you do this by yourself, man. Oliver, you are not alone. Not since you brought me into this. Us into this. Besides, Army regulations. A soldier never lets a brother go into battle alone”

“I’m out of bows.”

“I got my gun.”

“I guess it’s up to me to do the dismantling,” Felicity said, hoping against hope that there wouldn’t be hugs.

“This whole area is ground zero. I want you out of here,” Oliver said, like a sea captain announcing  _ women and children first _ .

“This whole area is my neighborhood,” she said flatly. “If you’re not leaving, I’m not leaving. Besides, if I don’t deactivate the device, who will?”

He reached for his phone.

“Oliver!  No offense, but do I tell you how to sharpen your arrows? I’ve studied this thing. I take roombas apart to unwind after work. Point me at it and I will disable it. Where is Merlyn keeping it?”

“It’s in the abandoned station near Puckett street. That’s where his wife was murdered. But you shouldn’t go in without backup at the surface.”

“Who did you have in mind?”

 

* * *

 

“Have you found it yet?” Detective Lance asked. He was somewhere above her, close to the Puckett street station in an unmarked car, monitoring the police frequencies. Felicity had him on the phone on one side and Team Arrow’s comm in her ear on the other side. It did not make her feel any less alone in the disused tunnel.

“I said I would tell you when I did.”

“Do you even know what an earthquake machine looks like?

“I must have been sick the day they covered that in anatomy. Right behind the rectum, isn’t it?”

“Gallows humor, Dr. Smoak?”

“Is there any other kind?” She sighed. “Look, if we’re doing this, I think you should start calling me Felicity.”

“No offense, but you don’t strike me as a Felicity.”

“No offense, but cops don’t bring out the best in me.”

“Oh yeah, you prefer the--”

Felicity gasped and dropped the phone.

“Smoak? Smoak?” Lance was saying, somewhere down by her feet. “Smoak!”

“Frak,” she knelt and fumbled down by her sneakers until she found the phone. “Sorry--I just--I found it.”

“Are you sure that’s it?” he asked.

“Do you want me to describe it to you?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Okay, I’m going to go ahead and get started on this. I’m putting the phone down so I can concentrate.” She tapped the speaker phone and knelt next to the machine.

He might have wished her luck, but she didn’t answer. Circuit board, then timer. Seven minutes on the timer. Felicity thought she could make it a paperweight in four. Three wires: green, yellow, and blue. Felicity pulled her surgical scissors out of her bag and cut the blue wire. The timer dropped to two and began to run faster.

“Oh no. No no no no no.”

“That does not sound good.”

“There must be some sort of anti-tamper safeguard. Hold on. I’m going to try to figure out how to override it.”

“Not enough time. There’s not enough time!”

“I don’t need to be told that!” she snapped. “I’m going to fix this. But in case I don’t, I need you to listen to me very carefully.” She was already working, examining the diagrams again and comparing them to the machine. “There’s only one person that needs to know if something happens to me. His name is Duvid Smekhov and the last time I heard, he was in a Russian prison called Koshmar. Did you get that?”

“David Smekhov, Koshmar.”

“It’s Duvid, with a U. Sometimes he goes by Deniskov Semenov. Sometimes Daniel Simonson. One time, he was Dean…" He could be anywhere and anyone. "You know what, forget it.”

“I’ll find him, Felicity,” Lance said. “That’s a promise.”

“Come on!” she hissed, working faster. “Come on come on come on.”

Suddenly, in her Team Arrow ear, she heard the oily voice of Malcolm Merlyn. He had to be right next to Oliver or Digg for her to hear him so clearly--a headlock? Kneeling over his body? 

“Don’t struggle. It’s over. There was never any doubt in the outcome.There was never any doubt in the outcome. Don’t worry. Your mother and sister will be joining you soon in death.”

There was a wet, skewering noise and Felicity’s hands almost froze. Almost done. Almost done. Don’t stop now. Don’t stop now.

“Thank you for teaching me what I’m fighting for,” Oliver growled. “But my father taught me how.”

In front of her, the clock stopped. She thought she might puke with relief. Quickly, she tapped the sensor pinned inside her hoodie to activate the comm.

“Oliver, I did it.”

“It’s over,” he said, probably not to her.

Lance sighed with relief over the speakerphone. Felicity slumped, realizing just how much of her body was covered in cold sweat. Her hands were steady as ever, but the rest of her wasn’t so confident.

“Felicity,” Oliver said. “There’s another device. There’s two of them!”

That was when the tremors started.

“I thought you turned the damn thing off!” Lance yelled.

“I did!” she yelled towards the phone. “Merlyn had a second device!”

“Laurel,” Lance said, and then he hung up. Or it was possible that cell service was down, not inconceivable given the infrastructure of the Glades.

Felicity scrambled to her feet and headed back in the direction she had come. In the dark, she stumbled several times, scraping her knees and the heels of her palms. Logically, having done a Smoak-sized amount of research on quakes, she knew a reinforced subway tunnel was a relatively safe place to be during a seismic event. But the more primal parts of her brain were screaming at a much higher volume for her to get out. She almost ran right past the manhole, but she tripped and fell just in time to see the hanging rope ladder beside her.

There was so much adrenaline in her bloodstream that she didn’t fully understand why it was so hard to climb until she reached the street and realized that the S wave of the quake was pushing her up and pulling her down somewhat independently of the position of the manhole. It took some careful timing to climb out without braining herself. As it was, Felicity still caught her ribs on the rim of the manhole. It knocked the breath out of her with a grunt, but she made it to hands and knees on the sidewalk. She had to crawl quickly out of the way as a small stream of people were already fleeing their ramshackle homes.

“Oliver?” she gasped, holding her side.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she looked around. Things were moving, uncomfortably, but nothing appeared to be collapsing. “It’s not so bad here. If I had to guess, Merlyn put the second machine on the west side to maximize the damage.” If there were two equidistant machines, two S waves, the constructive interference could max out the Mercalli scale. It would be bad enough with just one. Already, Felicity could hear sirens and an ominous orange glow against the lower clouds.

She needed to get to the clinic.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, that took me a minute to finish writing...

_ You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted. _

-Dr. Ben Goldacre

 

**Las Vegas, 2005**

Humans who have never had to leyn before a congregation of mostly strangers on a random Saturday morning do not truly know fear. Sure, your rabbi is with you and maybe you have a tutor in the audience and there’s always your family. But that somehow makes it worse. It’s people who don’t know you at all and people who know you better than everyone.  At least Felicity’s audience was very, very small. Their rabbi knew most of her background and all of her speech...hangups and there were just enough participants to make a minyan and all were known to her. 

Her stomach was somewhere underneath the bimah, but the yad was perfectly steady as she positioned it over the first letters of the parsha Pinchas.  No one had asked her to, but Felicity had insisted that she would read the entire parsha, start to finish, five full chapters of B’Midbar. This was especially ambitious since one chapter was mostly devoted to the census of the children of Israel. Her voice did not betray an iota of her fear until it was time for her to speak with her own words. She did not look up, but kept her eyes firmly glued to her paper and read.

“When I was born,” she began, and had to stop, and swallow, and start again. “When I was born my mother gave me two names. Felicity means ‘delight.’ Tirzah means ‘my delight.’ I hope that came true, and that I did make her happy. Tirzah is one of the daughters in this parsha. Tirzah is also my great-great-grand aunt’s name. She died in Kishinev, in Russia, protecting her younger siblings during a pogrom. My mother told me that she chose Tirzah for me to help make me brave, too.

“That’s why I asked Rabbi Septimus if I could read this parsha in particular. Tirzah and her sisters petition Moses and then G-d for what they deserve, their inheritance. They hang together and are not afraid, even though they are alone and they have nothing. My mother’s name was Donna but it was also Dine and it was also Shifra, which means beauty. Shifra and Puah were the midwives named in Sh’mot who were commanded to kill, but would not. I wonder if my grandmother wanted my mother to be brave, too, but they’re not here to ask. I used to think that so many names and so much history was a burden, but it’s not all the time. When I don’t want to be Felicity Smoak, I know I will always be called Tirzah bat Shifra. Thank you.”

  
  


**Starling, 2014**

Felicity did not make it to the clinic. She found Roy at the scene of a bus accident, trying to evacuate passengers through a window in the back of the bus. A few of them were huddled away from the window, covering their faces, while Roy climbed up the bus, which was tilted slightly away from him. He gripped something on the roof and jumped up and down, driving his feet into the safety glas over and over again. Meanwhile, Felicity became aware that there was a small crowd of dazed spectators. Where could she put them? The open street was probably the safest place for them, given the structural integrity of the buildings around them.

“Hey!” Felicity yelled, waving her arms above her head. She might as well have been invisible in the melee.  She tried grabbing at a passer by who was holding a balled up shirt to his bleeding head, but he too just kept going, shoving a younger woman in a Rockets hat to the ground in his haste. The bus window finally gave way, and the first escapee managed to step on the girl in the cap. Felicity ran to help, gripping the other woman’s shirt between the shoulder blades and pulling up. They both regained their feet, only to be knocked over by the next wave of passengers.

She was down, then, her already scraped palms digging into the street’s surface. Every time she pushed to her knees or even half-standing, someone else knocked her back. Felicity lost hold of the other woman and then she lost sight of her, too. When she fell and knocked her chin into the asphalt and saw stars, it occurred to her that she might actually die like this. People were trampled all the time. Of all the many, many ways a human body could expire, she never thought hers would go like this. She’d had dreams of dying on her own front porch, with a margarita in her hand, her second or maybe third husband massaging her feet. There was blood in her mouth.

And then there were two massive hands lifting her up beneath the elbows with the grace of a sommelier choosing a bottle from a wine cellar. The hands turned her until she was face to face with her enormous rescuer. She opened her mouth and nothing came out.

“Is everything okay?” Honi asked, smiling in spite of the situation.

Felicity shook her head, and started looking around for the girl in the ballcap.

“No worries, Dr. Smoak,” he said. “I got her.” Then he carried Felicity away, setting her down in the lee of the disabled bus. There were a few other people there, probably deposited by Honi, including the woman she was looking for. 

“Are you okay?” she asked. The woman, dazed, nodded. “Okay. Good.” Felicity turned back to Honi and threw her arms almost all the way around him. “You are so totally my hero. Again.”

“Lucky me,” he said, and took the opportunity to give her a friendly kiss on the top of the head. “Now what?”

“Doc!” It was Roy, down from the bus, looking perversely exhilarated. “Are you okay? Your chin.”

“Oh shit.” Felicity held the back of her hand against the bottom of her chin and, sure enough, it came away bloody. “I fell. A couple times”

“We gotta get out of here,” Roy said.

“The clinic,” Felicity said. “We have to--”

Roy and Honi shared a look.

“What? What? You have to tell me.”

“They’ve already looted it,” Roy said.

Felicity looked at him blankly.

“Just the downstairs, when I saw,” Honi added gently. “It happened very fast.”

“But--”

“We can go back in the morning and take a closer look.”

Why was Honi being so reasonable? Why was Roy looking at her like that, like he felt sorry for her? Why were her knees suddenly so watery?

“Whoa,” Roy said, taking her elbow, “easy.”

“They looted it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Honi said sadly, but he was inaudible now over the rising howl of the people of the Glades. It smelled like concrete dust and broken gas lines, Felicity realized, as well as fear. Windows were being broken, but that was minor compared to the pushing and shoving that was starting to escalate in the crowd.

“We really gotta go,” Roy said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this would be a great time for some cops to show up.”

“Oh no,” Felicity said. “Lance. CNRI?”

“Collapsed,” Roy said. “Doc, we gotta  _ go _ .”

“Right--right okay. Let’s go.”

“There’s a dive bar above two blocks over. I think it’s still standing and I know the second floor isn’t occupied.”

“How do you know?” Honi asked.

“Don’t answer that,” Felicity said quickly. “Unless you want to testify someday.”

Roy grinned. “I’m always looking out for your plausible deniability, Doc.”

That was when the first cop car into the Glades appeared, a Tahoe with no lights or sirens, tearing over the uneven streets. Roy’s right hand was on her left before she even registered the car’s direction of travel, pulling her away. He was almost fast enough. The left front of the car clipped her right side and sent her spinning away from her friends. She threw her hands out to keep herself from landing head-first, but she was moving too fast. Her last thought was to turn her face away from the pavement and then nothing.

 

* * *

 

She came to in the back of an ambulance. But it wasn’t her ambulance. And that wasn’t Sandoval sitting beside her. It was some guy with a beard she’d never seen before. And Roy. Who looked like he was going to cry.

“Roy?” But there was a mask over her face. She wanted to reach for her it, but neither of her arms was moving. Her mouth tasted like, well, puke. 

“Don’t try to move. Don’t talk,” Roy said. “We’re almost there.”

“Where?”

“I said don’t talk.” He looked serious, white as milk, and clenching his jaw. “Seriously. Honi and I...commandeered an ambulance for you. We’re almost to the hospital.They’ve radioed ahead.”

“Your vitals are good,” said the EMT with the beard. “We’re going to skip the ER and go straight upstairs, Dr. Smoak.”

And just like that, they were there, and Felicity was transferred to a more substantial hospital gurney. She was rolled past the faces of the colleagues whose nights and weekends and holidays she had covered for the last year and a half. The doctors wouldn’t meet her eyes and the nurses were looking at her in a more professional manner than she ever had before.

“Roy?” she asked, suddenly afraid in a way she hadn’t been before. Her words were clumsy in her mouth. Not good.

“I’m here!” he said, from down by her feet. “Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”

“I need you to call Queen Consolidated,” she said, trying to think. “Tell them where I am.”

“You want me to call your work?” Roy was incredulous. “Now?”

“John Diggle. He should know,” she said. “Tell them where I am.”

“Whatever you want, Doc.”

“Are you okay?” she asked, knowing they were approaching a set of doors through which he would not be permitted.

“Me?” he looked around, but not at the gurney. “I’m fine.”

“How bad is it?”

“Um.” Roy swallowed. “I can’t tell. You hit your head. There’s a lot of blood. I didn’t really want to… I think some things are broken.”

She was going to tell him not to worry, that she knew these doctors, that they were pretty damn good, but then she was through the swinging double doors and headed down a corridor that smelled a lot like pre-op. The nurses prepping her let her know that Benson and Torres would be operating. An orthopedic and a neurosurgeon? They were both assholes, but they were both very good with their hands. Why did she need both of them?

“We may need to drill a burr hole.” Benson said. “Epidural hematoma.”

“What? I haven’t had a scan.”

“You went to straight to imaging after you arrived.”

“No, I didn’t, I…” Felicity swallowed. “I came up here. I came right up here.”

“Don’t worry, Doctor Smoak,” she said. “Your brain is in good hands.”

“And the rest of me?”

“I’m going to stabilize the fractures,” said Torres. “If your vitals look good, we may go ahead and do the fixations.”

“Plural?” She was confused, jumbled.

Benson leaned over her, eyes kind above her mask. Mask? Were they already in the OR? Hadn’t they been prepping her? Had she said something about an epidural hematoma? Or fixations?

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Benson said.

Too fucking late.   
  


* * *

 

“Speak English. That’s not English, baby girl, we can’t understand you.”

“She can’t hear you, Popeye.”

“First off, they said to talk to her. Second, she’s starting to talk back. Three, I’m Army, not Navy.”

“Same diff.”

“Same diff--I swear, girl--”

“Don’t call me girl.”

“Don’t call me Navy.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Is that--is she--”

“Felicity?” Diggle asked her.

“Mpf.”

“Sin, get the nurse.” Something warm took her hand. “Felicity, it’s John. Can you open your eyes?”

“No,” she croaked.

“Okay. That’s fine. You did so good.”

“I did?”

“So good,” John said.

“Quake. What happened?” Felicity tried opening her eyes again--still a no go.

“It was bad, but the clinic is still standing.”

“Roy?”

“I made Thea take him home last night.”

"Honi?"

"Helping with cleanup."

“Oliver?”

“Oliver--he’s taking a breather.”

Felicity rolled her head towards the sound of his voice and focused really, hard on her left eye. It opened. She glared in what she hoped was his general direction. She couldn’t actually see a damn thing.

“We can talk about it later.”

“Now,” she said.

“Okay.” Digg sighed. “Tommy died.”

“Oh no.” She closed her eye again.

“I know. But don’t worry, okay.”

“Digg.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t leave me, okay? I don’t like hospitals.”

“We won’t.” He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “We’ll be here all the time.”

“Okay.”

There was a bustling noise and then somebody was prodding her in all the places that made her uncomfortable.

“Hey, Felicity?” Diggle said. “Can you do something for us? Can you open your eyes?”

“No.”

“Open your eyes, Smoak,” Sin said.

“Open your eyes.”

Felicity opened her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am tempted to write season two. No, I still have no idea what I'm doing!

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so this happened, and I couldn't let it go. No beta, no net. If you catch any errors, please share!


End file.
